Beautify the Witch

Using Pixinsight to make the ugly witch better. The original image was taken last December and was processed with Deep Sky Stacker and PhotoShop. The result was bad.

Now I tried to use Pixinsight and PhotoShop to beautify the witch again. More subtle colors and details are extracted. In addition, I attached two versions, color enhanced & regular. See which one you like the best.

Regular Version

Color Enhanced Version

M16 M17 Reprocess with PixInsight

Reprocess them, M16 & M17, again with PI.

PI and DSS comparison

M16 Eagle Nebula Crop

M17 Omega Nebula

M8 M20 Redo with PixInsight

As many astrophotographers used PixInsight and drawn my attention for sometime. But for a slow learner and slow respondent like me, I needed to wait until the end of academic year! Anyway, I found that PixInsight is something like PhotoShop, which is huge in functions and the learning curve is long. This is my first piece of PI work. I used Registration, Dynamic Background Extraction, Background Neutralization and Color Calibration etc. In handling this image, I found that Background Neutralization is particularly useful! The result is simply great and make the final touch with Photoshop much more easy! I also attached a comparison between PI & DSS. The DSS version was processed a week ago.

A good partner of APM-TMB 105-650: Borg 7704 Super ED Reducer

A long waited Borg 7704 Super ED reducer first light. It is a discontinuous model and I bid it from a Japan website http://www.buyee.jp/. It turns out that 7704 works perfectly with my APM-TMB 105/650. Although the back focus of Borg 7704 was not fine-tuned and default value was used, the stars at the extreme corners were reasonably sharp. There was more distortion at the lower left corner. It takes me sometimes to tune it anyway.

Date: 15-16/6/2015

Location: Pak Tam Chung, Hong Kong

APM-TMB 105/650 with Borg 7704 @F3.9, AVX, D1, 5DII, MGEN II

M8 + M20 : ISO 1600, 3mins x 25, Dark, Flat, Bias, uncropped

M16 + M17: ISO 1600, 3mins x 9, Dark, Flat, Bias, uncropped