Bubble Nebula

Kinch wrote: I spent a number of hours working on the next step. I had old 'Bubble Nebula' data from a previous attempt. I wanted to mix the RGB data with the NB data to try get a more pleasing shot. (The RGB data was not that great - see further down my Flickr page for that particular shot - from January 2014).

After a few attempts I came up with this:

I think the first image is much better, this 2nd one seems to be over saturated and the stars are no where near as pinpoint, don't get over zealous when trying to combine, I've made that mistake before, my bubble images aren't great because I did the same thing, I might try and re-process mine at some point

Thanks Simon for the pointers. I indeed was concentrating on trying to bring colour to the stars and blew it...literally! I have pulled back some so as to try and correct that. When you mentioned the stars being bloated - at first I was thinking that surely the NB stars would always be tighter anyway and the more I tried to correct the stars in that last shot the more fuzzy they got - just dimmer seemed to be all that I was achieving. I had so many versions that at some stage I just went back through them and found (what was at one time in the evolution of this shot) a finished NBRGB with reasonably good stars. I worked a little on this again this afternoon and came up with the one now showing on Flickr.
I may go back sometime but it is burning me out now. I have reduced the over-processing, I have tightened up the stars. I cannot however get the colouring (especially around the bubble) to come out as nice as the NB image. No worries - your comments opened my eyes to big mistakes I was making and I appreciate that help. This final one is better than the last I think.......it will have to do for now anyway




Link to Flickr: www.flickr.com/photos/kinch-astro/164727...et-72157644977591354

For some strange reason Bubble Nebula is a really tricky subject to process, for that subject you really need to have extra SII and OIII frames compared to the HA Frames, trying ot get the balance right to boost the blue is really difficult indeed. I've seen many Really good Astrophotographers spend days / weeks trying to process this particular subject

That is good information to know. I can rest this for now - I wont be gathering any more subs on this for quite a while.