M16 (Craig Emery)

M16

Rev C: reprocessed from raw subs using Pixinsight trial. Goals were to avoid weird blue shadows evident on some stars in last version, improve overall color balance and bring out a bit more of the faint nebula. Any feedback welcome.

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Acquisition and processing of this M16 image was a challenge for me as I continue to adapt to my new setup and build to longer exposure times, but I am pleasantly surprised with how it turned out. I was going to try for more total integration time but think this is all I'll be able to get for a while.

S/SW is my worst direction in terms of light pollution and transparency. Humidity was 80-90% and I shot as long as I could each night until the clouds moving in from the coast shut me down completely. These were the only three nights recently that I could even attempt gathering some data and I kept rushing the set-up, knowing time was limited. As a result, alignment and guiding was decent but inconsistent over the three sessions. I kept all but one of the subs in for processing anyway. I used a manual approach to try to normalize the images prior to aligning and stacking.

Image A is an example un-processed sub (probably one with slightly better guiding and mid range in terms of background/light pollution)

Image B processed in nebulosity then final adjustments in Aperture:

-applied Flats/Bias and then adjusted background color offset and black point (in stretch tool) for each sub to try to normalize intensities in a darker region and in part of the nebula across the subs from different nights

-aligned and then stacked with 1.5 SDV filter

-cropped, mirrored and rotated image

-tighten star edges (power 1.2)

-cycles of stretching/curves adjustments and minor color scaling and saturation adjustment

-Final minor adjustments in aperture: levels (Lum, R and G), slight color temp/tint adjustment and final crop

Final
Original
B
C
D

C

Description: Re-Processed using Pixinsight

Uploaded: ...

D

Description: adjusted histograms/curves, less noise reduction

Uploaded: ...

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Status	Basic success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	1730815
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

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M16

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