Cocoon using Straton.

[Guest ollypenrice]

Straton (which is almost 'No stars' spelt backwards...) is a star removal programme costing only about 15 euros and discussed by Nik in Astronomy Now this time. I like it! You can remove the stars from the linear image - that bit is important - and also retain them for separate processing and replacement later. This means that you can really stretch the nebulosity like a person gone mad without having to battle with masked stars or stars growing to excessive size. It is ideal for faint nebulosity in dense Milky Way starfields and plenty of images fit that description.

 

Here I used it on the L and Ha layers of a deep Cocoon widefield. The role in L was to keep the final star size down while in Ha I was able to stretch far harder without worrying about the stars. When you combine a starless Ha with the red layer in Blend Mode Lighten it has no effect on the RGB stars because the Ha is not lighter than the red for the stars. There will be all sorts of ways to exploit the programme so some experimenting will be needed.

 

Despite 26x30 minutes the Ha signal here was faint and this stretch is, believe me, seriously manic!

 

Have a good Christmas, all.

 

Olly

 

Bigger; http://ollypenrice.smugmug.com/Other/Best-of-Les-Granges/i-3bjPNHd/0/X3/Mopdified%20Straton%20FIN%20web-X3.jpg

 

[+RonC]

That sounds interesting, thanks Olly. A Happy Christmas to you and yours too   

[Tweedledee]

Love that image in hi res

That software sounds very unique and innovative for its price.

Have a great Christmas