Heart Nebula - completed

I have done as much as I am going to do on this - for now. There has been a lot of cloud here in Spain and it has taken two weeks to gather the subs for this shot.
Details in brief:
Tak FSQ 106ED. Atik 460EX. Astrodon 3nm Filters.
13 x Ha + 13 x OIII + 14 x SII (all 20 min subs) = 13hrs 20Mins total.

Used PixelMath in PixInsight to mix the initial SHO & map to RGB.
R: 80% SII + 20% Ha
G: 70% Ha + 30% SII
B: 80% OIII + 20% Ha
Then added Ha back in as Lum layer.

With Narrow band imaging I guess you can pick any combination that suits your mood....as long as the details appear in the picture. :y32b4:

Flickr link - the original highest resolution does indeed show up some good detail. I think I am learning here that deep sky shots need to be at least twelve hours to pull out fainter stuff. Patience is a must :rolleyes:

www.flickr.com/photos/kinch-astro/21604777274/in/dateposted/

Beautiful image, outstanding work!
Mike

Wonderful. Well done !

Wonderful image Brendan, you must be very pleased with it. Great resolution and well processed. Well done. Do you think those Astrodon 3nm filters make a significant difference?

John

Thanks Mike, John & John.
In answer to you John (Bruno) - yes I am indeed pleased but in fact will play around with the processing a little more next week. I always have the same problem.....work on the shot on a desktop - looks fine to me - then when I look at it on a laptop I become very disappointed with what I see. But at the same time I realise that I am probably my own hardest critic.....not a bad thing I suppose.
But also in this one you will notice that I have ventured into actually mixing the HSO some when mapping to RGB. I want to experiment more with that. This one was tiring me out on Friday/Saturday and I probably put it online in a hurry before going away yesterday - I was going visiting overnight and just wanted it finished. Like I said, I will look at it again in the coming week - not saying that I can improve it any....but all the practice helps getting to grips with the software (PixInsight) better.
As for the Astrodons (3nm) - yes I find them great. The Ha on this shot showed up brilliantly - I really was surprised at the Ha image before I did anything further to it. Bear in mind though that these 3nm (Ha) filters lose out on some bandwidth that can be 'filled in' by using a NII filter. If I was advising anyone - perhaps I would suggest a 5nm Ha rather than 3nm (and save later thoughts about getting the NII.)

Brendan.

Thanks for the advice on the filters Brendan. You might find a monitor calibration tool like "Spyder" helpful to match your laptop and desktop screens. It is also useful for matching the monitor and printer.

John