Rosette

[Jean-Yves]

Hi,

Here is my try at the Rosette nebula.
Since the Canon 300D would not get me enough signal, I used my ST8 and Astronomiks filters.
It took some stretching in Photoshop to get it out :

http://www.geocities.com/jybeninger/rosette.html

Comments most welcome !

Cheers

Jean-Yves

[Ron]

WOW Jean-Yves,

Nice image!  I can see you are moving right on up the ladder!

Looking Good, and it looks like your equipment is doing what is expected!

Thanks for sharing,

Ron

[twilbur]

Hey Jean-Yves! It's about time you had some clear skies! Loving your new wide field setup? You captured some nice detail in this wonderful object!  

The image is a bit heavy in the green channel which gives it an orange rather than the usual red appearance. If you drop the green curve in Photoshop just a little the color will look more rosey.  I have found my st8 to be green sensitive, with the green channel needing less exposure time than red or blue. Your's may have a similar trait.

Your M42 (and new avitar) is really good too! Super job!

[Jean-Yves]

Hi Ted,

I will review the color details, try for a better balance.
In the mean time, I did some work on the luminance and like the new one better, here it is,

JY

[Grizz]

Very beautiful Jean-Yves! I like the second one. You are getting good at this!

[Ron]

Jean-Yves,

I think I like this one better too!

Good Job,

Ron

[sc02492]

Jean-Yves, I like this shot very much.  A few things to note (since you wanted advice):

1.  The image looks a bit soft, even at an image scale of 4.58 arcsec/pixels.  My guess is that focus was a bit off, and/or you could consider using a mild Lucy Richardson deconvolution to cause the bok globule and dust regions to snap to attention.  How are you achieving focus with your set up?

2.  Star colors are muted.  Either they were over saturated during image acquisition, or you were too aggressive with curves stretching.  My guess is the latter, and you probably can go back to the original data to confirm this.

3.  The Rosette can really benefit from the addition of Ha data, blended into the R channel, and also used as luminance.  Take a look at this simple Ha shot that I took a year ago, using the Sky90 and focal reducer:



My SXV-H9's pixel size is smaller than the ST-8's, which means that my image scale is 3.26 arcsec/pixel, so I can capture a bit more detail.  But it  is the Ha light that really makes this region come alive.

None of this is meant to detract from your excellent image.

Steve

[Jean-Yves]

Thanks Steve for your very good analysis, I will follow the advise and restart processing from the original reduced data, I did a lot of creative stuff like blurring the color and sharpening the luminance to see how it would look.

I did not spend too much time on focus, I turned the knob manually untill the faint stars looked pinpoint. Improvement is on the list for the next one.

I had a real problem with my flats : the piece of cloth I use to diffuse the light has a fine texture. It is OK wityh the LX200 at f10 but here, the texture appeared in the flats as horizontal lines! I did some creative blurring to remove them...

Your Halpha image is amazing in detail, once I improve with my LRGB, it will be my next toy,

Cheers

Jean-Yves