nikonshooter Loc: Spartanburg, South Carolina

I had three nights with clearer skies. I took 70, 3 minute Ha, 70 3 minute Sii, and 100, 3 minute Oiii. 30 Darks, 100 Bias, and 50 flats for each NB filter used. So 12 hours of exposure total. I used Sequence Generator Pro for the heavy work and PSCC for layering, blending, and noise reduction.

I also took R, G, and B lights - 20 each all 3 seconds for the stars but I haven't added those yet. I will eventually eliminate the stars in this photo and replace with the RGB ones.

Gear: Stellarvue refractor, wide field SV70T - ASI1600MM-C cooled ~-20 with .80 reducer/flattener - Atlas Pro Mount.

(Download)

Spectre Loc: Bothell, Washington

Wow! Nice work!

Busbum Loc: 85367

Ed,
Outstanding job on that Western Veil Nebula...

nikonshooter Loc: Spartanburg, South Carolina

Thanks for the kind words. I am not to sure what is going on with my stars.......these, albeit over saturated, actually look ok. In the past - NB stars all have that horrific greenish/blue halo that is unmanageable in post processing. That is why I take separate RBG stars that I replace. But these are ok enough that I may not spend the time swapping stars. Maybe on a rainy day which we get our share of!

Europa Loc: West Hills, CA

Wow Ed, that is really nice! So much detail.

SonnyE Loc: Communist California, USA

Beautiful, Ed!

J-SPEIGHT Loc: Akron, Ohio

Europa Loc: West Hills, CA

Ed,

I have the same camera, and I believe I have the gain and offset set correctly at gain = 123 and offset = 18. When I determine my exposure length, I try to get the histogram just off the left side. I just shot Ha at at 80 seconds and have a fairly large gap from the left side. lum gets a gap at 20 seconds.

What are your gain/offset settings, wondering why you are able to get 300 second exposures. OR am I wrong at keeping the histogram near the left?

Thanks.

Brian

nikonshooter Loc: Spartanburg, South Carolina

The histogram will be bias to the left - most of the image is in the 10 to 20 luminosity range (dark) but the signal is the spike and it is perfectly normal for it to be shifted to the left. Gain depends on exposure time. At 3 minutes or less, I am at 200 gain and 40 offset......that all changes when I shoot longer. Typically I will dial it to 139. It's all about managing the thermal noise while maintaining a decent signal to noise ratio. This camera is very forgiving in that area....and a little tweaking with noise reduction software in post cleans things up well. I use Topaz DeNoise most of the time....but Nik software has a pretty decent DEFINE noise reduction software program. Both are plugins for Photoshop but I believe TOPAZ labs has a suite of post adjustment modules that operate as a stand-a-lone.

I am not positive but I do not remember applying any noise reduction is PS and I do not use any noise reduction techniques in PixInsight apart from SCNR and I rarely apply that. I have yet to have any of PixInsights noise reduction scripts/processes do as good a job as is done in Photoshop and I have tried them all - over and over again. When they do their job - they create artifacts/gradients even with masks.

If anyone with a command of PixInsight has a noise reduction process that works.......please share it.

Europa Loc: West Hills, CA

Thanks Ed. So I take it that my gain/offset of 123/18 giving me a histogram shifted 1/4 of the way off the left side means I need to reduce exposure time? The problem. Am having is that on a Luminance filter, I can only expose at 20 seconds and a f7, I’m not getting a lot of data. I assume this is the result of my bright skies?

I’m trying to figure out if my skies will allow me to shoot in LRGB or if I’m stuck with shooting OSC. Last night I tried Ha, I was getting 80 second exposures with the histogram shifted ~ 1/4 from the left. I haven’t process this yet to see if I got any detail.

Thanks Ed.

I did get the Nik collection back when you told us it was free. I’ve only played around with the DEFINE, it works well. I just have to learn moderation.

nikonshooter Loc: Spartanburg, South Carolina

[quote=Europa]Thanks Ed. So I take it that my gain/offset of 123/18 giving me a histogram shifted 1/4 of the way off the left side means I need to reduce exposure time? The problem. Am having is that on a Luminance filter, I can only expose at 20 seconds and a f7, I’m not getting a lot of data. I assume this is the result of my bright skies?

I’m trying to figure out if my skies will allow me to shoot in LRGB or if I’m stuck with shooting OSC. Last night I tried Ha, I was getting 80 second exposures with the histogram shifted ~ 1/4 from the left. I haven’t process this yet to see if I got any detail.

Thanks Ed.

I did get the Nik collection back when you told us it was free. I’ve only played around with the DEFINE, it works well. I just have to learn moderation.[/


You can take 10 minute subs in NB and not be affected by pollution. That is not the case with LRGB filters. Send me one of your Lum fits files. ed@emphoto.net I would like to read the exif data. But - jack up the gain and take as short exposure as you can get by with...this camera was made for doing this. I actually get nebulosity signal when I am taking star RGB images with some bright nebula and these or 3 second exposure.

CraigFair Loc: Santa Maria, CA.

You have seriously outdone yourself Ed.
Craig

DickC Loc: NE Washington state

Beautiful!!! How far away is that??

nikonshooter Loc: Spartanburg, South Carolina

According to Sky Safari, The distance to the nebula is not precisely known, with estimates ranging from 1,400 to 2,600 light-years. When you consider that light can travel around the world 7 1/2 time in one second......that a one light year is then about 5.88 trillion miles. A long way. I think the one thing that has me so intrigued is not so much the distance these DSO are away from our solar system....but fact that the photons that struck my sensor to render an image left this nebula (which is a supernova remnant) when man first discovered fire.
I keep this TIMELINE handy to refer to those relationships in chronology.

Counting Backwards from Now
60 years ago - Invention of the computer.
130 years ago - Invention of the telephone.
180 years ago - Fossil fuel revolution: coal, trains.
540 years ago - Invention of the printing press.
5,500 years ago - Invention of the wheel, writing.
7,600 years ago - Sahara desert starts forming in northern Africa.
8,800 years ago - The first cities.
10,300 years ago - End of the most recent glacial period: the Wisconsin glaciation.
12,700 - 11,500 years ago - the Younger Dryas.
18,000 years ago - Cultivation of plants, herding of animals. Homo sapiens arrives in the Americas.
21,000 years ago - Last glacial maximum: ice sheets down to the Great Lakes, the mouth of the Rhine, and covering the British Isles.
32,000 years ago - Oldest known cave paintings.
35,000 years ago - Invention of the calendar, extinction of Homo neanderthalensis. Homo sapiens arrives in Europe.
50,000 years ago - Homo sapiens arrives in central Asia.
100,000 years ago - Homo sapiens arrives in the Middle East.
110,000 years ago - Beginning of the most recent glacial period: the Wisconsin glaciation.
130,000 years ago - Beginning of the Eemian interglacial.
200,000 years ago - Beginning of the 2nd most recent glacial period: the Wolstonian glaciation.
250,000 years ago - First Homo sapiens.
350,000 years ago - First Homo neanderthalensis.
380,000 years ago - Beginning of the Hoxnian interglacial.
450,000 years ago - Beginning of the 3rd most recent glacial period: the Kansan glaciation, during which ice sheets reached their maximum extent in the Pleistocene, down to Kansas and Slovakia.
620,000 years ago - Beginning of the Cromerian interglacial.
1.4 million years ago - First firemaking by humans.
1.9 million years ago - First Homo erectus.
2.5 million years ago - First Homo habilis. Beginning of a period of repeated glaciation (loosely speaking, "ice ages").
3 million years - Cooling trend causes year-round ice to form at the North Pole.
3.9 million years ago - First known Australopithecus afarensis.
5 million years ago - Humans split off from other apes (gorillas and chimpanzees).
21 million years ago - Apes split off from other monkeys.
24 million years ago - Cooling trend causes the formation of grasslands; Antarctica becomes covered with ice.
34 million years ago - Gondwanaland finishes breaking up, with Australia and South America separating from Antarctica.
50 million years ago - India begins to collide with Asia, eventually forming the Himalayas.
67 million years ago - Asteroid hits Mexico, causing the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction. End of dinosaurs. 50% of all species died out! Intensification of world cooling trend.
114 million years ago - First modern mammals. World begins to cool.
150 million years ago - First birds.
200 million years ago - Pangaea began to split into separate continents: Gondwana to the south and Laurasia to the north, separated by the Tethys Sea.

DickC Loc: NE Washington state

Those are some amazing statistics, I'll keep that list!! As a retired Atmospheric Chemist I worked with the very small, but was always fascinated with the large! Thanks for your info!