M8 Lagoon Nebula, M20 Helix nebula and NGC6559

[Carole]

Thanks Mark, I am feeling much happier with it now.

shame that after a couple of weeks we put them all away and go on to the next one

Yes that's the way of this hobby, but I like to think I am learning as I go along.  At least having a website is a nice record of it all.

Carole

[MarkS]

Another version on today's APOD:
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap130830.html

[Carole]

Interesting Mark.  Now I have got Astro Art (and a few more tips from Olly), I am going to reprocess this image. 

Carole

[MarkS]

The main problem is that the Lagoon is so much brighter thean either the Trifid or the Cat's Paw.  This makes it more difficult to do them all justice in a single image.

[Carole]

Tell me about it..........

However I can always do them separately as well, which I did do with the Cats Paw and got a lot more data out of it.

Carole

[Carole]

Olly was disappointed I didn't use the Ha and has given me some instructions on how to add the Ha properly by splitting the channels, adding it to the red channel (lighten and merge down) and re-merging the channels. Another new lesson as I was previously adding Ha to the whole image as a layer and merging as luminosity.

I think it's brought the cat's paw and Lagoon out better.

This is now with 8 x 600Ha added:

Larger version:
http://cdn.astrobin.com/images/d3e92d42-dc87-4fd2-b157-8746ba9cc5d5.png



Lagoon on it's own:

[Fay]

Great improvement. i have always done it wrong then Carole. must learn Ollies method.

[Carole]

Hi Fay, Yes I've done it wrong up until now.  So many new things to learn.

I did do it with Olly at Les Granges, but this was one thing I didn't make a note of (splitting the channels and re-merging them that is), and when he E mailed me it prompted me, but not easy to describe over E Mail or net, it's easier with a demo.

Also he told me about doing a crop in Registar so that not only are your images registered but it crops them to the same size so they will lay over each other exactly, no fiddling around dragging the images into position and maybe risk getting it slightly wrong - brilliant bit of software.

All brilliant info.

Carole

[mickw]

Very nice Carole

I much prefer the widefield with so much going on.  It seems to make the crop look sort of ordinary in comparison - Just my opinion

[Carole]

Thanks Mick. 

Carole

[MarkS]

Looking even better now!

[Carole]

Thanks Mark.

Carole