Narrowband NGC6888

[derrickf]

This is my first attempt at processing narrowband image data and I'm still experimenting to settle on a standard NB processing workflow; I still don't have a good strategy for suppressing the halos around the brighter stars but hopefully they don't harm this image too much.

NEQ-6 Pro, Skywatcher Quattro 10CF + MPCC, SBIG ST2000 + CFW-10 with Baader LRGB + narrowband filters.

10 sub-exposures of 600s each through H-alpha, O-III and S-II filters (I initially tried 900s but too many stars were saturated so dropped back to 10 minute subs).

I mapped the colours using the Hubble Palette: R = S-II, G = H-Alpha and B = O-III. I duplicated the colour image then converted it to mono and made a new colour image with the sharpened desaturated copy as luminance.

Thanks for looking

Derrick

[Hitesh]

That looks amazing

[AndyUK]

Hi Derrick - You've certainly got a LOT of OIII showing through for the outer shell and tons of detail... Of course all these false colour images are very much down to personal preference - The workflow I've used in the past for HST pallette imagers is here - http://bf-astro.com/hubbleP.htm, which relies entirely on using Selective Colour adjustments - I was horrified when I put my first HST pallette image together and pressed the RGB button... It looked awful, but when I applied the selective colours almost exactly as described in that link, it suddenly started looking much more like I thought it should!

The link doesn't mention halos though (I assume you mean the blue colour around the brighter stars?) but personally, if you hadn't noted it as being an issue, I would have noticed it!

As an aside, the crescent nebula also lends itself very nicely to an HOO colour mapping too - You may find it makes the outer shell even more prominent... (Give it a go and see what you think?)

[Quatermass]

I like it very much the brain in the sky

[Hawklord]

Now that's a cracking image.

[Spr]

Excellent Derrick,

some great detail in the outer bubble.

I tried mixing the channels

0.5*S2 + 0.5*Ha

0.15*Ha + 0.85*O3

O3

from Jaun @ pixinsight

Lot closer with those ratios.

Darren

[derrickf]

Thanks Guys,

Andy - thanks for the link to Bob's Site - I was doing something like this to get some colour out of the initial garish green image but it's good to have his steps as a guide.

Darren - I'll try out those ratios and post an image if the results look interesting.

Regards

Derrick

[Gina]

WOW! Another fantastic image of "The Brain"

[todd8137]

nice