Wow, narrowband really cuts through the light pollution!  I think you also need to shoot a fourth one for the Luminance channel.

A-L-E-X wrote:

Wow, narrowband really cuts through the light pollution!  I think you also need to shoot a fourth one for the Luminance channel.

You only need luminance for RGB shots! You can't see the nebulosity with luminance as it doesn't cut out light pollution.

Phunnie wrote:

A-L-E-X wrote:

Wow, narrowband really cuts through the light pollution!  I think you also need to shoot a fourth one for the Luminance channel.

You only need luminance for RGB shots! You can't see the nebulosity with luminance as it doesn't cut out light pollution.

Oh, thats a good point, but I also heard you can use a regular light pollution filter or (better) an imaging light pollution filter (which corrects the white balance) for the luminance channel.  I wonder if that does anything for narrowband imaging?

A-L-E-X wrote:

Phunnie wrote:

A-L-E-X wrote:

Wow, narrowband really cuts through the light pollution!  I think you also need to shoot a fourth one for the Luminance channel.

You only need luminance for RGB shots! You can't see the nebulosity with luminance as it doesn't cut out light pollution.

Oh, thats a good point, but I also heard you can use a regular light pollution filter or (better) an imaging light pollution filter (which corrects the white balance) for the luminance channel.  I wonder if that does anything for narrowband imaging?

LP filters as luminance can help immensely for normal LRGB composites, but for narrowband it does more harm than good. The signal is nowhere near as close as narrowband. You can also use the Ha filter as luminance and make sweet HaRGB composites.

Welp, got bored and decided to do a Bicolor Ha & OIII blend while waiting for SII data

omg and this is in a light polluted area?  There's a site called astrobin you should start a collection on there

A-L-E-X wrote:

omg and this is in a light polluted area? 

Yup, bortle 8. Light pollution is visible to the naked eye without taking long exposures. It's pretty bad, which is why I went narrowband.

There's a site called astrobin you should start a collection on there

I will, but right now I need a lot more experience with post processing. Just switched to PixInsight so I'm completely new to the processing methods. I gave the SHO palette a try nonetheless...

Total about 9 hours of integration time (3 hours with each filter)

Wow that's outstanding, great job. 

Would love to do something like that one day myself. I live in bortle 3 skies, used to be between somewhere from 1-2 20 years ago though   Oh light pollution, how much I love you.

Well, did a few modifications and darkened the dust. It's still nowhere near perfect, but it is what it is. I'll probably come back to it at a later time with more knowledge in processing.


In the meantime, I've decided to take my last clear night for a while to start on a new target!

NGC 7000 / North America Nebula

That is an incredible result, Phunnie.  I absolutely love that color palette.

Last night I also did some astrophotography, though not with such nice equipment.  A quiet, beautiful night under the stars in the North Cascades, with the Canon Rebel T3 and a tripod.

Wow.
I really wish I had darker skies. That looks amazing. I've never even seen the milky way in my life. Darkest skies I've ever been under and actually looked up was somewhere around Bortle 6. I've been in a Bortle 1 area a few years ago during a camping trip, but I was too tired to look up and went straight to sleep Many regrets. 

A quiet, beautiful night under the stars in the North Cascades, with the Canon Rebel T3 and a tripod.

Untracked? Holy ***.

Phunnie wrote:

Wow.
I really wish I had darker skies.

Same, I live right in the middle of most polluted sky area of Italy. Luckily there are a few mountains around and there the sky is acceptable, but not enough for seeing the Milky Way though.

I plan to go out for a hiking trip end of next month to the Grampians here in Aus, which is on the very edge between 0 and 1 skies so way darker than where I am.  My mate and I will try for some photos.

Phunnie wrote:

Wow.
I really wish I had darker skies. That looks amazing. I've never even seen the milky way in my life. Darkest skies I've ever been under and actually looked up was somewhere around Bortle 6. I've been in a Bortle 1 area a few years ago during a camping trip, but I was too tired to look up and went straight to sleep Many regrets. 

A quiet, beautiful night under the stars in the North Cascades, with the Canon Rebel T3 and a tripod.

Untracked? Holy ***.

Wow, untracked?  The longest exposures I can do with the stars still appearing like points is 15 seconds, which coincidentally, seems to be about the longest I can do without light pollution becoming prevalent (and still preserving star colors.)
There's a free tool to remove light pollution called Sequator, you should try it!

HOO bicolor blend of NGC 7000 / North America Nebula.
35x300" Ha
35x300" OIII

There's a free tool to remove light pollution called Sequator, you should try it!

I'd be against using some automatic tool like Sequator. I've tried it myself and it kinda works, but I found that I get better results by just removing LP manually.