Ok, let me have it!

Hi all,

I've been battling with this image for a while now, and perhaps it's time to take a step back and let everyone take a look at this and see what could be improved.

I finally got around to adding color data to my Rosette Nebula H-alpha image. I've added 3 hours of RGB (12 x 5 minutes each channel, binned 2x2) to my original 4 hours of H-alpha.

I don't know if I'll ever bin my color data again. What an adventure it was, to say the least!

All data was captured last November, 2006.

Takahashi FSQ-106
Takahashi EM200 Temma 2
SBIG STL-6303
Astrodon HaRGB filters

My biggest challenge was aligning the stars so they don't end up with uneven haloes. A few tricks helped along the way. I'm still not 100% satisfied, but I thought I'd share for feedback.

Eric

Attached Image:

OK, I cleaned it up a bit to dare post a full-sized version. Here it is:

http://tinyurl.com/28bads

Eric

A nice & very dramatic looking shot! 8)
Nicely done my friend! I like it!

Love the wide field around the Rosette, as it makes it stand out...

Eric,
Looks like the detail was well preserved from the mono version and the color looks good. Your only challenge was alignment and haloes?

Do you use a full scale, offset, rotate, skew allignment program like Registar or Astroart - if so, shouldn't have so much of a problem. If you manually choose alignment stars, do you choose small isolated stars well off the edges?

I do a lot of 2x2 bin on color data. If you want to minimize your haloes, try selecting the medium to bright stars and running a minimum filter on them in the RGB's combined prior to adding any luminance or luminance layering. The 2x2 bin can bloat larger than your luminance - particularly if the luminance was an HA. Don't worry if you over minimize - worst it does it take your brighter stars to white (which they are likely to come out as anyway being bright).

My 2 cents worth...