IC2169 and Friends

SGPro Images
1

This image of IC2169, vdB79, LBN903, IC446, NGC2247, and NGC2245, in Monoceros is near the more famous Cone Nebula.

This image consists of LRGB data simultaneously captured from two scopes: My CFF 250RC at f/6 with a Moravian Instruments G3-16200M camera, and a Stellarvue SV80ST with a QHY163M camera.

In total, there is over 29 hours of data for this image, processed with PixInsight.

2

Very nice, EXCELLENT, Joel! I bet it took you more than 29 hours to process all of the data. :smile: One day I hope to be able to process images half as good as this one.

Mark

3

Thanks Mark. Indeed this is the 3rd processing rendition, and I probably
spent more than 30hrs doing it.

4

You have managed to retain the star colors very nicely. A great image of this target.

cm

5

For the RGB portion of this image, I used Pixinsight’s new ArchsinhStrech
tool. It does a fantastic job of retaining color. Believer it or not, I
actually DE-saturated some of the red stars because they were too obnoxious.

6

Excellent image, Joel!

I have played a little with ArcsinhStretch but have yet to get a good result with it. The blacks either end up clipped or the image looks washed out. It seems to impart a harshness to my images that I don’t like. Your image looks great, however. Maybe I just need to play with it more.

Glenn

7

Thanks Glenn. ArcsinhStretch is extremely powerful and can easily ruin
things. I’m no expert either. However there’s a few things I have
learned.

First of all, use ArchsinhStretch mostly just on RGB data. What I have
typically done is used ArcS on just the RGB image and use other stretching
methods for the LUM. For this image I did use ArcS on the LUM data, but
very sparingly. Since the RGB data can be heavily smoothed, the little
black dots and other artifacts I see with ArcS can be smoothed out.

After clicking on “estimate black point”, and showing the clipped pixels, I
always need to move the slider to the left until there are just a few
clipped pixels showing.

Run ArcS in two or three passes instead of all at once.

8

Thanks Joel. I will try out your suggestions. Again, nice image!

Glenn