The Flames of Cygnus – a 9 panels mosaic. Interactive version here.
My biggest project so far! It took me 2 months – a total of roughly 60 hours of exposure time, 20 hours of processing time and 30 hours of computation time – to make this 104 megapixels image.
Here’s an illustration showing how big this region appears in the sky compared to the moon (bottom right).
Equipment
- Samyang 135mm f/2
- QHY163M
- Baader narrowband filters
- Sky-Watcher HEQ5 Pro
- QHY5L-II-C and QHY 30mm guidescope
Acquisition (Total : 58.8h)
- Location : Backyard, bortle 5
- Ha : 643x180s (32.1h)
- OIII : 534x180s (26.7h)
- Calibration : darks, flats
Processing (PixInsight)
Individual channel processing
- Background levels equalization (dnaLinearFit)
- GradientMergeMosaic
- Gradient removal (DBE and ABE)
- Deconvolution (tutorial)
- Noise reduction (TGV and MMT)
- HistogramTransformation
Color combination (tutorial)
- StarNet++ on Ha and Oiii
- Creating the dynamic factors
- f1 : Oiii
- Boosted using curves
- f2 : Oiii
- Boosted++ using curves
- f1 : Oiii
- Creating a weaker version of Ha
- Ha_weak : Ha
- Flattened using HDRMMT and curves
- Ha_weak : Ha
- Combining the channels with PixelMath
- R : f1*Ha_weak + ~f1*Ha
- G : f2*Ha + ~f2*Oiii
- B : Oiii
Luminance processing
- Creating the dynamic factor
- f : Oiii*~Ha
- Boosted using curves, noise reduced using MMT
- f : Oiii*~Ha
- Creating the synthetic luminance with PixelMath
- L : f*Oiii + ~f*Ha
- StarNet++
-
Sharpening (MMT)
-
HDRMultiscaleTransform
-
LocalHistogramEqualization
-
Adding the stars back (PixelMath)
- Star reduction (tutorial)
LRGB processing
- LRGBCombination
- CurvesTransformation
- SCNR
Taken in July – September 2020
This is a totally insane and breathtaking image. Astrophotography at its finest. Big, big compliments and congratulations from the Netherlands 😉
Daniel
Thank you Daniel 😀
C’est excellent! Félicitations.
Merci !
Exquisite. Probably one of the best Astrophotograph i have ever seen. You should sell it. Would make a great portrait.
Thank you very much! I’ll let you know if I do 😄
It’s really impressive ! Good job !
Thank you!
When you say something is « Boosted using curves » what exactly are you doing in CurvesTransformation? Also, if I’m following this correctly, the only place the stars come back in is on the L layer, yet the stars in the final image have color. How did you accomplish that?
“Boosted using curves” simply means that I’m applying a standard S curve. I recommend you to read my tutorial on narrowband combinations for more information!
You read it correctly – the stars color should be of the same hue as the starless background color. The only stars that aren’t white are those that are on “top” of nebulosity.
It’s a very inspiring masterpiece! Congratulations for this excellent result !!!
Thank you!
Congratulations! Impressive image.
Have you tried a starless version of this one?
I usually prefer with stars but on this image removing stars could help to highlight the nebulosity even more.
Thanks ! I have but I never posted it online. Here it is : https://thecoldestnights.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/CygnusMosaic_small_starless.jpg
Awesome! It gained a lot of depth, almost 3D in the upper part.