I’m currently experimenting with CI to try to see how deep I can get in the field. For an amateur astronomer it is difficult, because apparent magnitude is a very diffuse definition. It can be measured and calculated at different wavelengths, and they wary a lot. I’m slowly learning to use all the catalogs in Aladin, but it’s a steep learning curve, so I felt the need to work with something “pretty”.

This time I chose NGC 281, the Pac Man Nebula. I wanted to try narrowband imaging in the SHO palette, but found it difficult to find enough CC licensed narrowband images, so instead I made a mixture of Red=SII, G=Ha+Red (from RGB), B=OIII and blue+green (from RGB). Each channel was gamma corrected and combined into a Luminance layer. All that was combined into an “LSHO” image with good SNR.

I then ran a manual deconvolution, using a mask made from Lightness-Starmask (Histogram stretched). With the same mask I used UnsharpMask and with Wavelet generated Starmasks I used a bit of MorphologicalTransform on the different sized stars.

The stars were also partly replaced with RGB stars, I used a hole lot of curves and other stuff ;)

You can find more information about Crowd Images in some of the other examples in my gallery.

Image Credits (Again, thanks a lot for sharing your work!)

Andrea Pistocchini, arcturus13, AstroGabe, AstroGG, astrojeff, Chris Madson, Claustonberry, Dan Watt, dave halliday, David St. Louis, Epicycle, fragro, Fred Locklear, galaad16, geco71, Giuliano Pinazzi, Hunter Wilson, Janos Barabas, Jorge Barata, JSpower, Jürgen Kemmerer, Jussi Kantola, Ken Sturrock, LLacertae, Luca Argalia, Luigi Fontana, Mike Durkin, Mike Markiw, milosz, Morten Balling, nicoairbus, NicolasP, Özgür Ünat, Paolo Lazzarini, pascvale13, PaulHutchinson, Phil Hosey, Ralph Wagter, Richie Jarvis, RIKY, Robert J. Hawley, Salvatore Iovene, Sendell, Stan McQueen, Steve Yan, Tim, Walliang Jacques.