Here Is My Latest Attempt at an Image

Hi All,

Forgive the "cross post"...

Here is my latest attempt at a Narrow Band image. 255 minutes wih an FSQ/ST-2000 combo in 15 minute subs. It is far from complete and please forgive the weak S/N ratio.

Prior attempt of same target:

http://www.astromart.com/forums/viewpost.asp?forum_post_id=505964&poll_id=&news_id=&page=2

Do you think the new one is better?

Brian

Attached Image:

Brian Richardson said:
....Do you think the new one is better?.....

[COLOR="Navy"]No.
The second image shows effects from oversharpening: ringing, mottled areas, and hard-edged stars.
If you want to punch up the first image, I would first try some localized curves adjustments. That may be enough to get the 'look' that you want without sharpening. If not, I would just be more delicate with the sharpening.[/COLOR]

Brian Richardson said:
......please forgive the weak S/N ratio.....

[COLOR="Navy"]I know the ST-2000 is a little weak in the Ha part of the spectrum, but I would have thought 255 minutes would have given you a pretty good S/N.
The first image is pretty good as it stands.
[/COLOR]

dan

Hi Brian,
This looks nice, the second try brought out more details.
There is little over processing on Alnatak, but that is easily corrected, the nebula shows well. Be a little more careful with the sharpening and use a little contrast instead to bring it out. You can select an area to work on with the lasso tool or the magic wand and then leave the other portions untouched, to get the detail. I think that somewhere between the two would be best.

Many thanks for all of the replies especially Dan Kowall for pointing out what I did not do a good job of. I will reprocess the data backing off on the sharpening because, well, it looks like h#ll.

Another issue that has been brought up is the spikes on Alnitak. The uglies around the perimeter of Alnitak has been caused by the sharpening technique that I used but the spikes are really puzzling me. Prior to the Meridian Flip none of the FITS masters show the spikes but everyone of the FITS master after the Meridian have them. Anyone have any ideas on what could have caused them????

Many thanks again!

Brian

Hello Brian and congratulation on the beautiful image!

No comparison with the previous attempt for me.
The only suggestion I would give is to use some noise reduction procedure: I normally used Grain Surgery within PS, but the reduce noise filter in PS CS2 and CS3 is pretty good also. A very light Gaussian blur could do the trick too (setting at 0.3 pixel radius). Just a thought, but the image remains truly great even like this

It would be nice to know which equipment was used.

Ciao
Luca