Heart Nebula in HOO

[STEVE333]

This is my first NB image of the Heart Nebula. I was hoping to see some Blue, but, my current processing skills don't show any blue. However, I'm still pleased with the overall result. We had six straight days of clear nights with almost no moon, a rarity for this coastal town. I managed to stay up for five of the six nights capturing data on both this target as well as my previous image of the Pacman. Quite honestly it left me exhausted and almost sick yesterday. A good nights sleep did the trick and I'm feeling fine today. I'm hoping to capture some S2 data on this target tomorrow night when another clear night is possible.

Image Details
WO Star71 telescope, ASI1600MM camera
24 x 600 sec 3nm Ha, 24 x 600 sec 3nm O3 Lights (Total Exposure 8 hr)

Heart Hoo by STEPHEN KING, on Flickr

Thanks for looking.

Steve

[Peter802]

Very nice Steve, thank you for sharing.
It is easy to get carried away and overdo things!!!
Glad that you recovered quickly.

[Juno16]

Just beautiful Steve.

After just recently shooting this target with an ocs camera and multi-narrowband filter, I can really appreciate your fine capture.

Nice, bright, crisp image with great natural color. Your work is really beautiful and shows your dedication and skills in AP.

Very nice!

[drock]

Great image. Thanks for sharing.

[Ed217]

Impressive image!

[Jockinireland]

that is stunning steve - The resolution and detail is wonderful.

[Astrovetteman]

That's AWESOME Steve! Great details and excellent processing......LOVE IT!
Tom

[Gmetric]

The details are exquisite, Steve. The amount of TOT has definitely paid off. That’s an excellent image .

[Micke187]

Nice! But if you want to try and make a bicolor to get the blue and gold out more try pixelmath with these inputs:
Go into the expression editor.
red channel: HA
blue channel: O3
Green channel: copy the image name and type in : (HA-channelname*.5)+(O3-channelname*.5) And then dont forget to greate new image and also make it to an rgb image.
And you should get a bicolor with more blue and gold.

[STEVE333]

Nice! But if you want to try and make a bicolor to get the blue and gold out more try pixelmath with these inputs:
Go into the expression editor.
red channel: HA
blue channel: O3
Green channel: copy the image name and type in : (HA-channelname*.5)+(O3-channelname*.5) And then don't forget to create new image and also make it to an rgb image.
And you should get a bicolor with more blue and gold.

Thanks for the suggestion Micke. Do I understand correctly that channelname = the name of my HOO image? In other words, if my image is named HOO, then the PixelMath expression for the Green channel would be:
(Ha - 0.5*HOO) + (O3 - 0.5*HOO)?

Thanks - Steve

[Micke187]

Yes the "channelname" is the name of the image. You can just paste it in between the paranthes and multiply sign.
Like so: (imagename*. 5)+(imagename*. 5)

[TheButcher]

That is Really Excellent Steve!

[STEVE333]

Yes the "channelname" is the name of the image. You can just paste it in between the paranthes and multiply sign.
Like so: (imagename*. 5)+(imagename*. 5)

I gave it a try Micke, but, it only brought out a little more of the blue. However, your post and one from Bradleycraig prompted me to start looking around on YouTube. I found a tutorial that was specifically aimed at "making the blue Pop in HOO images". I gave it a quick try and, wow, it looks like it really works. If you are interested the link is below:



Thanks so much for taking the time to pass along the suggestions.

Steve

[Micke187]

I have watched the exact video when i too wanted to make a bicolor version so that video is great. And yeah it needs a little bit more tweking before combining the channels first. Maybe should have said that first. Range mask is good to stretch the O3 nebulosity more and also tone down the stretching on the HA-channel so the o3 pops more. Lay a luminance layer after for the HA-channel on the final image i guarantee it will make a big difference. Use lrgb combine for the luminance. And then tweek the saturation in curvetransformation and make it pop even more.

[MariusD69]

Very impressive! Great details. Very well done, Steve!!

[BABOafrica]

Not familiar myself with the finer points of processing in PI... (Never used it.)

But your image, as is, well, it's really nice with excellent detail.

I especially liked the contrast between the lighter and darker portions of the nebula.

BABO

[jthommes]

Great image Steve. That's a helpful link on OIII Ha combination.