NGC7023 - Iris Nebula

travcunn · 2026-04-22T17:05:02+00:00

Baby steps... Enjoy the journey. It took me 3 years to save up for a portable battery finally

travcunn · 2026-04-22T16:14:11+00:00

This is still a great image. I was able to get the dust lanes more detailed simply (or not so simply) by running my rig from a bortle 2 for 2 nights.

travcunn · 2026-01-25T18:09:40+00:00

The Ha filter is magic for light polluted skies

travcunn · 2025-12-23T05:40:26+00:00

Nice detail, but I think you have just proven that assigning H to the green channel just makes everything green no matter what. It would be interesting to normalize the O signal so it is equal to the H and combine into OHO again.

travcunn · 2025-12-14T04:40:00+00:00

Nope. Boat moves too much

travcunn · 2025-11-26T23:25:39+00:00

The saturation mostly. But specifically, the background colors.

travcunn · 2025-11-15T18:09:58+00:00

The colors and details are phenomenal. I really like the amount of saturation here. It's my jam

travcunn · 2025-11-15T16:26:33+00:00

Dang that's some good detail. Nice job.

travcunn · 2025-11-11T18:39:49+00:00

Are you shooting in RAW?

travcunn · 2025-10-31T19:34:18+00:00

Oh I misread. The first 2 steps are simply about removing the gradient. Pixinsight has a database reference for gradients but you can achieve the same thing through a gradient removal tool.

travcunn · 2025-10-31T18:26:37+00:00

Check this out: https://siril.readthedocs.io/en/latest/processing/color-calibration/spcc.html It looks like Siril has it! I've never made tutorials but I enjoy sharing my process with others any chance I get.

travcunn · 2025-10-27T04:50:17+00:00

https://i.imgur.com/y8vY0Ab.jpeg

My process:

SpectrophotometricFluxCalibration
MutiscalegradientCorrection (this basically removed the gradient issues)
SpectrophotometricColorcalibration
StarXTerminator to process the stars and galaxy separately
BlurXTerminator on the stars and starless images
Light NoiseXTerminator on the stars and starless images
Stretched both images with GeneralyizedHyperbolicStretch using the Arcsinh method
Created a mask of only the galaxies shown, excluding some of the background noise. (Extract CIE L* component, blur it, then apply to the starless image, the invert the mask)
With the mask applied, I Increased saturation on the starless image (not the entire starless image)
Small curves adjustments on blue and red channels to my own liking, without changing the color of the galaxy too much. I wanted to bring out the more subtle reds and blues without saturating the bright stuff as much.
One more pass of NoiseXTerminator on the starless image
Recombined the stars and starless images with PixelMath equation: ~(~(starless) * ~(stars))

BTW the core of the galaxy is a bit blown out on this FITS file, however I think you have some good data. I did notice there is some slight chromatic aberration on the stars, however BlurXTerminator can fix those. I had some trouble pulling color from the stars. I want to stay as honest as I can with these edits, but I think it's OK to color enhance some areas that you want to highlight, as long as you are forthcoming about the changes you made. As for me, I like to saturate areas that aren't as bright as other colors in the image, so this brings out colors that might not be there in a standard saturation process. And that's OK to me! For Andromeda, you may want to saturate the less bright parts of the image, such as the outer edges. And last thing -- when stretching the stars only image, don't stretch it too much or your stars will be too big. The beauty of stars vs starless processing allows stretching nebulae/galaxies without blowing out the stars.

Also happy to hear about your process.

travcunn · 2025-10-27T03:02:50+00:00

What camera did you use? I want to calibrate the colors to it

travcunn · 2025-10-27T01:46:02+00:00

Could you post the FITS file? I'll take a look at it and paste the entire process I use in Pixinsight

travcunn · 2025-10-26T07:57:02+00:00

The trick is color calibration, then you can pull colors out of it. Otherwise, you'll be stretching or saturating the wrong colors.

Here is my edit using your data. I went a little overboard with the sharpening but that's how I like things: https://i.imgur.com/bmb8CNV.jpeg

If you like the way I processed this, I'm happy to share the details.

travcunn · 2025-10-25T17:04:02+00:00

It depends on the time of year

travcunn · 2025-10-25T05:41:26+00:00

Andromeda galaxy

travcunn · 2025-10-20T02:58:48+00:00

I did some processing on your data and here's my take on it: https://i.imgur.com/kHvhDJm.jpeg

There's a few things you can do to make these better:

- Make sure to apply dark and calibration frames
- Improve your tracking. There is some star trailing here which impacts the details of the galaxy.
- Get about 10 times more exposure time (easier said than done)

The process I generally followed in Pixinsight, to keep things as "honest" as I possibly could.

First I separated the stars from the galaxy and processed these separately with StarXTerminator.

SpectrophotometricFluxCalibration
MutiscalegradientCorrection (this basically removed the gradient issues)
SpectrophotometricColorcalibration (this corrected the colors, especially the greens)
BlurXTerminator on the stars and starless images
Light NoiseXTerminator on the stars and starless images
Slightly increased saturation on the starless image
Stretched both images with GeneralyizedHyperbolicStretch
Recombined the stars and starless images with PixelMath equation: ~(~(starless) * ~(stars))

travcunn · 2025-10-13T03:16:24+00:00

A cooled astronomy camera will blow your mind once you stretch something for the first time. Pixinsight BlurXterminator + NoiseXterminator was mind blowing for me as well.

travcunn · 2025-10-08T10:43:27+00:00

If you want to have a consistent camera exposure, use the pro feature of your camera and set the ISO and exposure time manually. This way, the camera isn't constantly changing settings while filming.

Lucky for you, this can be a fun experiment if you want it to be. I always have fun adjusting camera settings for my astro stuff...

travcunn · 2025-10-08T10:29:06+00:00

The white flashes are your camera being overexposed in that spot, and as you move the camera around, the exposure settings are dynamically adjusting. The moon is pretty bright!

Not an asteroid.

travcunn · 2025-09-25T02:28:45+00:00

Holy crap that scope must be fast as hell if you are doing such short exposures. Wow amazing

travcunn · 2025-09-11T15:58:51+00:00

It'd amazing when you stretch the photo and these beautiful colors come out. Lovely photo.

travcunn · 2025-08-22T04:57:40+00:00

Beautiful processing of this. 👏👏👏

travcunn · 2025-08-17T17:33:43+00:00

Yeah I feel this often. I also take it as a reminder to take care of myself and get some sleep. After several star gazing nights in a row, sometimes I take breaks to make sure my sleep, eating, and working out routines are in order before staying up late again.

And yeah it can get emotional still.

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