Thor's Helmet Ha and OIII NGC2359

[MartinB]

I've always wanted to capture this target but it is soooo low down. I'm fortunate in that may obsy is raised to first floor level and I have a decent southern horizon. Even so, it was only just skimming over the top of the hedge.

It is a fascinating nebula having the characteristics of both a planetary nebula with it's strong OIII content and an emission nebula with ionisation fronts along edges of the helmets wings. The central star is known as a Wolf-rayet star - a hot giant moving towards supernovadom and blowing out hydrogen and oxygen gas as a fast wind on a massive scale (30 light years across)

It was the first thing I targeted when I got my MN190 a year ago and I've wanted to come back to it ever since.

Scope MN190

Camera: QSI 532 with built in OAG using a lodestar

Filters:Baader 7/8nm Ha/OIII

Subs Ha 12x30mins OIII 9x30mins gathered over 3 nights

Captured, calibrated and combined in Maxim

Deconvolved in CCD stack

Finished in PS with a quick dip into PixInsight

I used a mix of the Ha and OIII for a luminence and the colour is from Ha - red, OIII equally split to blue and green

It looks like there is some vignetting but the image is properly flattened and I think it is actually an extension of the gas cloud. I've left it anyway!

Hopefully this marks the end of what has been a terrible imaging drought for me.

[lukebl]

Great capture and lovely processing, with a lot of fine detail. Planning on having a go at this one myself.

[Chris]

What an amazing image! I haven't come across this nebulae before, to me it looks both beautiful and sinister at the same time, I guess thats the horns Must have been very tricky to image especially considering the air mass you where imaging through at such a low declination.

Inspiring stuff

[RobH]

Tough target delivered very nicely indeed Martin.

I think you're right about the fainter nebulosity...it could be mistaken for vignetting but probably isn't.

Cheers

Rob

[Beyond_Vision]

Considering how low down that is you have done a great job Martin, pulling out some really good detail.

Regards

Kevin

[Zul]

Stunning!

[swag72]

That is a great image. Really soft in parts and so well focused in all the right places. Looks the business.

[MartinB]

Thanks a lot for the comments guys. I'm pretty pleased with the result, and suprised given the dec. I recently changed my computer and must check the setting in PS, it has come out a bit brighter and lower in contrast after transfer to the forum.

[ollypenrice]

An imager's image, Martin. This really is an achievement. It is a devil of a thing from where I live let alone from Chesterfield North Pole! What is more you have come incredibly close to the RGB colour. This is one of the few extended green nebulae in the sky.

Olly

[Looking Up]

Superb image Martin, especially as it's at such a low level in the sky, well done!!

[MartinB]

What is more you have come incredibly close to the RGB colour. This is one of the few extended green nebulae in the sky.

Olly

Thanks Olly. I've found that with targets with plenty of OIII such as planetary nebulae, simply assigning OIII to both blue and green works pretty well. There's no need for a synthetic green. The OIII and Ha had identical stretches when processing so there is a lot of OIII.

[shogun]

Fantastic picture. I love how crisp in details it is.