Praying Ghost Nebula (reprocess)

[Carole]

I imaged this target in 2013 at Olly's place in France.  Never been that happy with the result, so 8 1/2 years later with more processing skills, I decided to give it another go.

Luminance 12 x 900secs, Red 4 x 600secs
Green 3 x 600 secs, Blue 6 x 600secs

I don't even have the original process having had a "go" at this several times. 

This is an interim process which was cropped .



Latest reprocess:

[ApophisAstros]

Very nice , i do like this target for some reason , i am not sure even with more data i can improve my version , unless at a darker site.
Roger

[Carole]

Thanks Roger

[Hugh]

Whilst looking with my untrained eyes I do see the 2nd version as much better, I do notice that you seem to have lost a lot of background stars.  Was that deliberate or was it the magnification of the cropped one that brought them to the fore?

Hugh

[Carole]

Hi Hugh,  Many imagers made the stars smaller and get rid of the tiny stars Hugh as it helps to make the Nebula stand out.  Olly taught me that, but it has taken some years to refine the process.  In fact Olly taught me a couple of processes I have used in this image. 

The stars tend to get stretched in the post-processing because you need to stretch the data to bring out the nebulosity, and the stars get stretched af the same time, so just putting them back as they were so to speak.

Some of these post-processing processes take a long time to learn so it is always good to go back and re-process old data as you learn more.  Still learning after 11 years of deep slky imaging. 

Carole

[Roberto]

I like your second version a lot Carole!

Roberto

[Carole]

Thank you Roberto.

Carole

[RobertM]

Whilst I prefer the nebulosity of the reprocess I also find that the evenness in brightless of the background stars give it a somewhat artificial look.

Robert

[Carole]

I really ought to reprocess this from scratch rather than tweaking previous processing.
Not sure if l still have the original subs and flats etc since it was so long ago. 

Carole

[garrick]

The details really do come through on the second image. Great processing. Star colours are much nicer too. Really nice image.

G

[Carole]

Thank you Garrick.

Carole