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RCC-M13

Pleiades Astrophoto PixInsight Request for feedback M13 Globular Cluster Messier Objects
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Cfeastside avatar
Cfeastside avatar
first time shooting and editing a globularI and was hoping to get some feedback on it.  A few things that catch my eye was it might be a bit sort and it seems to bee lacking color.   Not sure if the softness im seeing is due to seeing (it wasnt that great), collimation slightly off, focus slightly off, or any combination of those!   I use NINA’s autofocus routine and get a pretty decent u shaped curve.

Withregards to the color, not sure on that.  Im pretty new pixinsight user, third image ive edited with it, maybe more curves transformation with saturation is needed?

I may have over done the BlurXterminator use.  I left the core a little hotter as i think i like it that way.

this is only about 17 minutes of data so maybe a full hour would produce more color?
 
equipment, data collection, and processing notes:
lights:350@3s
darks/flats/dark flats
b4 skies; backyard
 
c9.25 with celestron reducer
uv/ir cut filter
celestron oag
zwo asi 174mm guide cam
zwo asi 294mc pro
EQ6r Pro
NINA,PHD2

PROCESSING NOTES
used pixinsight for image calibration, integration, and processing
WBPP
Dynamic Crop
Dynamic Bachground Extraction
SPCC
BlurXterminator
NoiseXterminator
Histogram Transformation
HDRTransformation script
Curves Transformation (contrast and saturation)
 
final color balance in PS
Adam Blocks tutorials
 
Any comments/suggestions would be appreciated!  

thanks



M13
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Jonny Bravo avatar
Jonny Bravo avatar
OK... I'll temper my critique on this not even being a 20 minute integration
  1. Get more data (couldn't help myself) LOL.
  2. The background has some mottling (reds/blues). You had to pull things up quite a bit because of the minimal integration time.
  3. You went a bit overboard with BXT / NXT / etc and introduced some weird artifacts:

    4. Here's the same area (roughly) from my version of M13:

    Forgive the egg-shaped stars on mine... tracking/guiding issues with my setup. My image scale was a bit finer than yours at 0.46"/px vs your 0.72"/px. What I wanted to emphasize is how on your image structure has been blurred together, creating rather interesting artifacts.
  4. Stars are a bit violet / magenta tinted. There's a great script in PI called Correct Magenta Stars that will help. All it does is invert the image, run SCNR and invert back.
  5. There's a pretty subtle horizontal band at the top of the image... not sure if that's a calibration artifact... you can see it at the bottom of this snippet:
  6. Core has a bit of a greenish tint... maybe a touch of SCNR would help.

Most of this is just me pixel peeping and nitpicking. Taking the image as a whole I think it's pretty darn nice for less than 20 minutes of time on target (mine is 4.5 hours by comparison).
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Cfeastside avatar
Cfeastside avatar
@Jonny Bravo thanks for the excellent feedback!  Adding your images for comparison is very helpful!
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