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Disclaimer: This is only my edit. The data used to create my final version came from the Hubble Space Telescope and the folks at M.A.S.T. and Hubble Heritage @ https://archive.stsci.edu/prrepds/heritage/

I want to get into narrowband imaging of the universe sometime in the future but had no idea how to process the different filters into a colour composite. I asked on a forum called Cloudy Nights and someone directed me to the Hubble Heritage site where some data can be downloaded. While this is only a small portion of the effort that goes into creating these images, I find it quite fun and can't wait to have my own setup one day, albeit not a billion dollar telescope floating in space.

Here's what I did: I developed the 4 .fits datasets in FITS Liberator 3 into 12 different files. Each one was processed as a darker, mid-range, and brighter image. I took the sets of these and processed them as a tone mapped HDR in Photomatix. I brought these 4 tone mapped images into Affinity Photo and created a false colour image. The filters types got the following colour assignments: 435W got blue, 555W got green, 814W got Red and 658N got red.
I then brought the darker set of the images into Affinity Photo and created another false colour layer and used the blend range tool of Affinity Photo to further restore some more of the highlights.

[sergeremy]

That's a fine looking image, good job. What is a .fits file? Does the data it contains resemble in any way what can be found in a .raw file? (The link in your post leads to a 404).

[aitrus3]

Odd that it leads to a 404...
A .fits file is similar to a RAW yes. But it's developed by astrophysicists and is what dedicated astrocameras use to capture these objects. Problem is you need rograms like PixInsight, Deep Sky Stacker, Nebulosity etc to stack and process them. These files were pre-processed and stacked by a nasa scientist, so the data is impeccable. I used fits liberator (free from the ESA) to read, stretch and convert the fits files to .tiff. I'll try and get the link working later.

[Mr. Ed]

Impressive stuff you have there. Really enjoyed viewing.

[aitrus3]

I'm really not sure why the link copied with the prrepds. it's only supposed to have 1 r.
Here it is:
Heritage HLSP

---------- Post added 08-07-2018 at 06:53 AM ----------

And thank you Mr.Ed!

Here are the group of hubble shots I edited in descending order.









---------- Post added 08-07-2018 at 06:59 AM ----------

for all information .fits, wikipedia is a good source: FITS - Wikipedia

It contains much more data than just the images, and can actually store both x-ray and infrared images in one file.

[bscott]

All very nice.