m57 - from last night..

[JohnP]

Hi All,

Another image from last night - m57 taken through MN56 with CLS filter - 12X300secs + RGB. As an experiment I binned 2X2 when doing the colour (which isn't easy when your camera is only 640X480 pixels to start with) & resampled up when processing. This enabled me to only use 10X1min subs each for RGB. I really struggled with processing this & ended up trying a new technique (masked layering) - you could call each cheating..! What I did was as follows:

1. Create two images (layers)
2. Process one for the background
3. Process one for m57 - I actually used DDP in Aip4Win which made the background really horrible but improved m57 dramatically. I didn't worry though cause I would be using the background I created in (1).
4. Layer the two images & mask the m57 in the image with the good background & let the m57 with the crappy background show through.
5. Then combined the composite image with the RGB.

It's kinda worked but if you look closely you can see a dark ring around m57.

Anyway here is the image:



Cheers,  John.

PS - Tony - I'll be testing you on this technique the next time I see you...

[Fay]

John, I don't know what to say. That is really good. I bet you were beavering away on this image all day.

It has certainly worked well, although I am not sure about the ethics. I feel it would be the same if I kept my false colour IC1396. I am sure that a lot of the well known imagers do processing like this. 
Perhaps I am trying to be too purist, but I think it is really good all the same. If you know you are able to make an image that much better, then it is nicer to look at it like that than leaving it not as good.

Fay

[MarkS]

That technique has worked pretty well John.