gorann

Finally a long clear night on Saturday, and I aimed my dual RASA 8 rig at this area of dark nebulosity just to the east of the Elephant Trunk Nebula. Collected about 9.5 hours with IDAS NBZ filter (so Ha and Oiii). I soon realized that there are other interesting objects here. Down to the right is a big round object of mainly Ha nebulosity and just above it there is a small but bright red object. After some search in the in the Simbad database I found that the larger area of Ha nebulosity is DA 568 and the smaller one is BFS 10 (aka WN B2154.8+5747). They were first found as strong radio emitting objects and not until 2004 described as Ha regions when a Kerton et al (2004) devoted a whole paper to these overlooked objects (https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1086/381296/pdf). Cheers, Göran This is what they look like as radio objects according to Kerton et al (2004). The big object seen to the right is the Elephant Trunk Nebula:

Thanks a lot Wim and Chris! Guess what, skies have cleared and I am exposing again!

Thanks Steve! Yes, in this case the left half of the image really demands NB, at least for the Squid, while the right half is clearly better in RGB. I guess everything should be allowed as long as it works😁

Maybe you can take it from this one? Would be an honor to contribute a corner😁 20200919-20 NGC6946 RASA PS46.tif

Go for it Olly!

Clouds and/or full moon made me dig into data on my hard drives. I realized that I could make a two panel mosaic stretching from the Squid and Bat to Barnard 150 (The seahorse) and finally the grand design galaxy NGC6946. Data collected with RASA8 and ASI2600MC in September and November 2020. Totally about 9.5 hours. The left half of the mosaic was taken with an IDAS NBZ filter (enhancing Ha and Oiii) while the right half was taken without filter, so RGB. Maybe a bit unorthodox to mix these but then Oiii is needed for the Squid while dark nebulosity and galaxies are best seen in RGB images. Cheers, Göran

Really nice and dusty with an eye-catching nebula as an extra bonus. You say considerable crop, so I guess you wanted to focus our attention on Hind's nebula. However. it makes me curious about what else can be seen in the full-field image, especially since there is a lot of nice dust in this area.

Both looks great Rodd! I would rotate the image 90° counter-clockwise to get the leaping cheetah in the correct position😉.

Amazingly deep for only 3 hours. You even managed to catch that elusive SNR G132.7+1.3.

Yes, I really like it and the blue reflection nebula comes out quite nicely. Regarding microlensing could it be Rodd that you are using longer exposures than @Snoani, whatever he/she uses? Just a guess.

I remeber often seeing "star lost" or "star mass changed" (whatever that means), but I cannot remember “No guide stars detected”. In any case I find that the Mesu will do its job until PhD finds it again.

I agree, nice dust and rarely seen outer swirls. Excellent!

Excellent result of an unusual object from what sound like a heroic enterprise Steve!

Looks great Dave so you can with good conscience move on to your next project!

Since I am clouded in I could not stop myself from playing with your image in PS. Only did two things: a dose of NoiseXT and then tweaking the blue curve on a starless image (StarXT) to suppress the blue cast. I hope you do not mind. However, more data would improve it since I noticed that any further stretch brought out quite a lot of noise. CS, Göran

Looks very promising and a bit more processing may be what is needed. I see a blue cast here and there and especially between the main galaxies that maybe should not be there. Maybe also try another does of NoiseXT?

That is a very impressive image and rarely seen in such a wide field! Congratulations! I love the processing.

Quite a nice image but is not this (blue bloating) what you would theoretically expect from a doublet compared to a triplet apo?

I noticed that you live in Norway, like I do much of the time. On finn.no you can now and then find some fine telecopes at good prices. Right now there is this carbon fibre Stellarvue 90 mm APO svr90t triplet for sale at 16 000 NOK = 1150 GBP. https://www.finn.no/bap/forsale/ad.html?finnkode=326603842 I do not know the seller and have never owned one of those but it looks like a very good deal to me for a top of the line telescope that you may never want to sell even if you later buy a bigger one. Maybe someone here knows more about that telescope model can comment on it.

I fully agree with stunning, spectacular and fabulous! Probably the deepest cocoon images I have seen. Cheers Göran

For a while I have been running a rig with two RASA8 and a piggybacking Samyang 135. All are at F/2 and the cool thing with the Samyang (FL 135) is the extreme wide field. But when if comes to both resolution and catching the faint stuff, the Samyang is nowhere near the RASA. The simple reason is aperture: 67.5 mm (Samyang) versus 200 mm (RASA). So there is no doubt in my mind that aperture rules when it comes to resolution and depth, as long as both instruments do not get limited by seeing or guiding. This may be an extreme comparison and the difference between a 6" and 8" SCT may not be so clear, but I assume it will be there.

Here is my version. All done in PS except BlurXT (default setting except I used 0.15 "Sharpen stars") and a dose of SCNRgreen at the end, both done in PI. In PS I stretched the image a bit, then run StarXT, and continued to stretch the starless image. I got rid of most of the green with Gradient XTerminator. Tweaked the colour curves a bit to suppress some blue casts. Gave it a dose of Noise XT near the end and increased contrast with the HiPass filter. Yes, more integration time would help but I did not see much mottle. Cheers, Göran

SCNR usually works well for getting rid of green, but not always. On some images it creates ugly blue casts on dark patches of sky. In those cases I skip SCNR and try playing with the green curve to suppress it in parts of the histogram. But I do that in PS, where I do all my stretching, but I assume something similar can be done PI. The mottled background you have could be real but NR may have made it look odd. Try processing it without NR to see what it looks like. Like @ollypenrice I would never even think about applying any NR before I know what the image looks like (so after a fair amount of stretching) and I can se what the NR does to it (and I have the possibility to use it selectively).

I either use my OSCs (ASI2600MC) with IDAS NBZ(Ha+Oiii) or without filter (so RGB, the camera has a built in UV/IR cut). However, I am curious how you process the data if you use both Ha+Oiii and Sii+Oiii filters. Do you make separate images or mix them somehow, like putting the red channel from Sii+Oiii data into the green channel of the image?

Very few of us have the luxury of living close to a major astro-dealer so we have to rely on having everything shipped. It has worked well for more than the dozen scopes I have bought from dealers so far. As David indicate, one should be slightly worried if buying from a private person that may make packing mistakes.