Cederblad 214 and NGC 7822

Hello all,

I tentatively present my latest "finished" work: Cederblad 214 and NGC 7822. I say "finished" because I am at a point where I'm probably sufferring more from processing fatigue than fully satisfied with these images. What hurts a bit is:

1) Just when I think I have a pleasing image, I look at my histograms and see severely-clipped data. Even with these versions, I see that I am in danger of having some data clipped after performing my TIF-to-JPG conversions.

2) Some of my final processing was done on an uncalibrated laptop with a really bright screen; I'm hoping that some of the noise I'm seeing is more a result of this laptop (it's not as jarring on my calibrated monitor, the last time I checked), so I'm leaving it alone for now. If you hear a scream later on coming from my general direction it means I looked at these JPG's on my calibrated monitor and don't like what I see

This image represents 20 hours and 18 minutes of total usable exposure time taken over September and October 2007 (6 hours of H-alpha, 7 hours of SII, 7 hours of OIII, and 6 minutes each RGB for natural star colors).

Here is the nebula in the Hubble Palette:
Small: http://tinyurl.com/33s82h
Large: http://tinyurl.com/2urff4

Here it is with a pseudo-RGB look:
Small: http://tinyurl.com/2jcw6m
Large: http://tinyurl.com/354674


And here is a look that I am dubbing the SkyFactory palette, named after Davide De Martin's website (http://www.skyfactory.org/index.htm) of fabulous pseudo-RGB images taken from red and blue data from professional observatories. I don't presume that my image even comes close to his, I'm just inspired to create this image as he did his:

Small: http://tinyurl.com/364xfy
Large: http://tinyurl.com/2ooslq

To all, I wish a Merry Christmas and here's to a Fantastic New Year!
Eric

PS I've attached a small Hubble Palette version to whet your appetite.

Attached Image:

Nice Enrico, a neat object, good composition and the Hubble palate works well.

that's a tremendous image of a most difficult nebula region.
you did a great job, Eric.
so relax, lay back and enjoy the feedback

Eric,
Very nice effort. I can see the result of the hours spent collecting the data and I can only imagine what was spent on the processing. Great job.

Tell me about the blended intensities... The Hubble pallet shows the SII and OIII without being overpowered by the Ha. I presume you adjusted the scale of the filtered data sets to achieve this - scaling up the SII and OIII to Ha levels? In the Pseudo-RGB, The Ha seems to predominate. Is this because you scaled the SII, OIII the same as Ha?

Wow Eric,what an effort and it paid off 8O

I like all the versions but the Hubble palette is awesome!

Your processing brought out the details and really gives it some pop while transitioning into the fainter portions nicely.

I'm not sure why the histogram would look clipped on this other than maybe a stacking artifact around the edges.Did you try cropping just a few pixels around the edges?

Great job and a great image,


Jason

Eric,
Incredibly well-deserved honor. Congratulations. And now for the question on processing: when you say you also shot 6 minutes each RGB for star color, how do you add that in the processing?
Thanks,
Larry

Super! You put in the time and effort and deserve that APOD.
Henry