LBN 468 Difficult Nebula

[kerrywaz1]

I have been working a set of images taken of LBN 468 that I have processed several times and I am just not happy with the results. All my processed images turn out sort of globby and murky with poor detail. I am hoping some of you folks can do better and share your processing steps. My feeble attempt is attached.

The set consists of 12 calibrated luminance frames, and four (4) each of red, green (V filter) and blue. The RGB frames were binned 2x2. Here is the link to a zipped file containing the single calibrated images:

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/50915281/LBN468.zip

Thanks.

[mschuster]

Hi Kerry, did you use enough bias, darks and flat frames to build your calibration masters? Maybe doing the calibration in PI to avoid 16 bit quantization would help a little bit. And have you checked collimation?
Mike
 

[kerrywaz1]

Hi Mike,

The images were taken with a remote rental telescope system (Tak 150 refractor/SBIG STL11K). The company provides the calibration masters, so I can only assume they are diligent about providing adequate frames for their generation.

Thanks,
Kerry