NGC6914 and surroundings (Christian Großmann)

NGC6914 and surroundings

Revision title: Trying the Forax color palette with 12 hours more data

Since the beginning of december, I went back to school for some education for my job. I am in my mid 40s now and never felt the need to do this. But I got an offer from the company I work for and everything was payd, so I couldn't say no. It was real fun and I learned a lot. On the other hand, I took this very serious and sadly I did not find the time to do any astro photography. But school is done now and I am back to real life...

During the last three nights, I took images of NGC6914 and its surroundings. The first night, the moon was still up and I did my Ha images. The next night was nearly moonless and I went for OIII. Last night it was a rough start because of high clouds, but finally it cleared up and I was able to get some SII images. Tonight, I might try to get some additional LRGB frames as well. But I decided to process the data I already have and did some SHO combination. Because of this widely used color palette, I tried to use some LUT overlay in Photoshop and created this HOO-like look. I like it, because it is a bit different to so many other images. I may process the data in HSO as well, but some LRGB frames may be helpful for this.

I love this region. I did not expect that much detials there. I saw the movie Vaiana (I guess its called differently in other parts of the world), but there is Mauis hook in there. The nebula to me looks like this hook and so I framed it that way.

This is my first image since the beginning of the year. I really enjoyed it. At some point, I tuned my EQ6 and now I am able to keep my guiding errors really low. It helped a lot and the image quality is far better now. My processing skills are still a mess, but hey - I'm back for more...

Original
Final
C

C

Title: Trying the Forax color palette with 12 hours more data

Description: Since the last version, I collected some more data. I am still trying different processes and scripts in PixInsight to learn more about image processing. This is the part of astro photography I struggle a lot with and it is not my favorite part. But it is necessary to create beautiful images. So I was not happy with the look of my standard HSO or SHO combinations. I found a nice video on Youtube that was explaining the Forax palette, which is basically a mathematical combination of the different HSO channels but creates a much more realistic looking image (if there is such a thing in astro photography).

I collected about 12 hours more OIII and SII data. I also took a set of LRGB images for the stars. So there is about 24 hours of subs available for processing and it makes a huge difference. This is the first time, I replaced the HSO stars with the LRGB data. The colors of the nebula are nice looking and all in all, I learned a lot this time. Don't get me wrong. I am still not satisfied with my result and I know there is a lot of room to progress. But I'm getting a bit better, I guess. I had to force myself to keep processing images better each time.

Uploaded: ...

N.I.N.A. Users
Imaged with N.I.N.A.

	Distinct awarded users	Total awarded images
Image of the day
Top picks
Top pick nominations

	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Deep sky
Solar system
Extremely wide field
Star trails
Northern lights
Noctilucent clouds
Landscape

	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Backyard
Traveller
Own remote observatory
Amateur hosting facility
Public amaeteur data
Professional, scientific grade data
Mix of multiple sources
Other
Unknown

Submitted The date and time when you submitted this image for IOTD/TP consideration.	...
Views by Submitters (available since September 19th, 2023) Every image is assigned to 50% of available Submitters. In the event that at least 80% of them don't view the image before its time in the IOTD/TP process expires, it's assigned to the other 50% of Submitters and the process begins anew.
Promotions by Submitters When 3 distinct Submitters promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for Top Pick status. This requirement, in addition to anonymization of images and distribution to only a subset of them, prevents biases and ensures that the best images are selected.
Promotions by Reviewers When 3 distinct Reviewers promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for IOTD status.
Early dismissal Staff members have a lot of images to inspect on a daily basis, and they can dismiss images if they believe they don't meet the requirements for IOTD/TP selection. If an image is dismissed 5 times, it's removed from the process. This streamlines the process and ensures that any bias present in promotions could be overruled by other staff members.

Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	6107318
PixInsight job	1B8A8FZLXCYI3TT3EL4RG8CMV4E7DIVF
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	20h24m31s.46
RA (top/left)	20h23m10s.42
RA (top/right)	20h21m22s.96
RA (bottom/right)	20h25m50s.76
RA (bottom/left)	20h27m43s.27

Dec (center)	+42°46′30″.3
Dec (top/left)	+43°30′23″.4
Dec (top/right)	+42°15′47″.3
Dec (bottom/right)	+42°02′32″.1
Dec (bottom/left)	+43°16′48″.10

Image Index:

Contribution Index (beta):