This was from a month ago out in Joshua Tree National Park. I have a favorite little spot to set up there that has almost the whole sky open to shoot.
I gave up on processing this one at least twice over the last month. It's a super faint Nebula, it's one you can't see by eye or see in the camera. You just have to hope you are pointing in the right direction.
My problem in processing this one was that as I stretched the image to pull the faint Nebula out of the background the image kept getting tons of color noise. The last time I tried editing this about 2 weeks ago, I tried for a while and ended up thinking it's just too faint, and to shoot this one I would need a dedicated Astro camera instead of just my Nikon D850. It is super faint after all, and despite getting some good results on some of the DSO's, I do realize there is a limit as to what I can capture with an unmodified DSLR camera.
Well, like a dog returns to a buried bone, I returned to this image last night, and started processing it again. I decided that as I stretched the image by careful use of the Curves adjust in Photoshop, that as the color noise started to creep up, I would apply Color Noise reduction from Noiseware to knock it back down. I had zero sharpening and zero Luminance Noise Reduction on, so I wasn't affecting the actual noise or losing detail, I was simply removing that red/green background color noise that can creep up.
The background image is darker then Mike has suggested that I have my background at, but looking at other peoples images of the Witch Head, going dark seems to be very common. Perhaps because it's so faint. I know letting the background go darker also helped cover up the color noise. So that may be why others do it to?
This is my first shot at Witch Head. I plan on shooting it some more with the same settings I used for this, so I can get a couple of hours of detail to stack and process next time. So perhaps next time I can pull the detail out better without so much trouble.
The bright star in this is Rigel.
Nikon D850
Tamron 150-600mm at 300mm
SkyGuider Pro
20 x 60 secs at ISO 3200 f5.6
10 x Dark Frames
12 x Bias Frames
12 x Flat Frames
All comments are welcome,
Jim
I gave up on processing this one at least twice over the last month. It's a super faint Nebula, it's one you can't see by eye or see in the camera. You just have to hope you are pointing in the right direction.
My problem in processing this one was that as I stretched the image to pull the faint Nebula out of the background the image kept getting tons of color noise. The last time I tried editing this about 2 weeks ago, I tried for a while and ended up thinking it's just too faint, and to shoot this one I would need a dedicated Astro camera instead of just my Nikon D850. It is super faint after all, and despite getting some good results on some of the DSO's, I do realize there is a limit as to what I can capture with an unmodified DSLR camera.
Well, like a dog returns to a buried bone, I returned to this image last night, and started processing it again. I decided that as I stretched the image by careful use of the Curves adjust in Photoshop, that as the color noise started to creep up, I would apply Color Noise reduction from Noiseware to knock it back down. I had zero sharpening and zero Luminance Noise Reduction on, so I wasn't affecting the actual noise or losing detail, I was simply removing that red/green background color noise that can creep up.
The background image is darker then Mike has suggested that I have my background at, but looking at other peoples images of the Witch Head, going dark seems to be very common. Perhaps because it's so faint. I know letting the background go darker also helped cover up the color noise. So that may be why others do it to?
This is my first shot at Witch Head. I plan on shooting it some more with the same settings I used for this, so I can get a couple of hours of detail to stack and process next time. So perhaps next time I can pull the detail out better without so much trouble.
The bright star in this is Rigel.
Nikon D850
Tamron 150-600mm at 300mm
SkyGuider Pro
20 x 60 secs at ISO 3200 f5.6
10 x Dark Frames
12 x Bias Frames
12 x Flat Frames
All comments are welcome,
Jim