Elephant Trunk - IC1396 Narrowband, WIP

[badgers]

Ok, you can now officially call me a refractor convert!

I just love IC1396 the elephant trunk nebula, I was always very impressed with it's dark evil looking structure : )

I really struggled with this on my Newt in LRGB and decided to give it a try with my little refractor after two failed LRGB attempts on the newt.

Only 2 hours a channel so far, so a bit of a work in progress.

I think I'll need another 2 nights to bring out the SII and OIII to the same signal/noise as the Halpha.

But I'm pleasantly surprised with what's achievable from just 6 hours.

Processing was Hubble SHO combination in Pixinsight using Pixel Math 1:1:1

But the Red and Blue channels needed extra stretching to produce a non-green image.

This is the best I've managed so far, but it seems reasonable and will hopefully improve as more data arrives.

I probably should have done a star-size reduction, but I'm having issues getting star-masks in pixinsight to pick out both small and large (bloaty) stars.

As always any comments or advice welcome!

Ha: L

R: SII (2 hours)

G: Ha (2 hours)

B: OIII (2 hours)

Bob Franke tweaks applied to colours see here.

Thanks,

Anton

[Daniel-K]

very nice Anton i feel its just a tad dark

[stellawolf]

Very nice i like it well done

[Gina]

Very nice Unusual colours

[Kbramley]

Nice image, lots of subtle detail coming through, I particularly like the dark nebulosity at the top of the image

[badgers]

Thanks guys,

I quite liked it darker, as I don't want to push the Red and Blue channels too much until I get more data for them.

Although, on my monitor at work it did look a little dark as that monitor wasn't calibrated too well.

But without the Franke colour tinting, it looks more like this, depends on your personal preferences!

Narrowband seems very finicky to get right, especially when you need more data : (

[Gina]

I like it

[appyaardvark]

Very nice indeed, I'd like to give this one a go myself, my previous attempt was rather disappointing with my DSLR, perhaps the Atik will bring me better results

[MarPi]

I agree. This pictures are great.

[Martin-Devon]

Anton, I prefer the first version - I think the darker/blu-ish background works very well with this image and will probably complement other images as well - it's different from what is normally posted and in my opinion, works well. Great job...

[VigdisVZ]

It's different, but I like how it turned out. You've done a cracking job.

[sologuitarist61]

A really great image Antom - well done

[badgers]

I went and got another 8 hours of data through some pretty patchy skies.

Then I went back to the processing to see how much of a difference it made.....

Answer was not much..... A lot of head scratching ensued and then I realised I was making a total pig's ear of the combination functions in Pixinsight.....

I'd been combining the channels using PixelMath but hadn't been stretching each channel separately before the combination.

Put the new data through again and the colours certainly look more like what I expect given what I see online. Some issues with purple stars and I reckon I need more OII and SIII almost 5 hours each doesn't seem to be enough.

Anyway, here's the latest version, hope it's improving!

Some dark halos to deal with where I've been trying to tweak star colour, but almost there.

Thanks for all the comments and feedback... this narrowband lark is hard work : )

[Gina]

That's beautiful - love it

[stan26]

Stunning Anton, improving nicely and quite dramatically as you add more to it, colours look fantastic.

Stan

[badgers]

Thanks guys.

It's at almost 12 hours now but I think the oII and sII need another 2-3 hours each.

My last batch of shots were in poor seeing and it looks like Pixinsight down weighted them so they didn't add as much to sII and oIII as I'd hoped.

This kind of target isn't ideal for a rainswept balcony in the centre of a city : (

My enthusiasm is at 100% right now, but the weather isn't playing ball.

[Gina]

Amazingly the sun's out at present but there's plenty of clouds about just waiting to completely cover the sky by tonight! A couple of clear nights a month seems to be the order of things - very frustrating Ooodles of DSOs to have a go at and a couple of pieces of new equipment to try out but precious little opportunity!

[badgers]

I'm hoping for a break in the weather to go out and catch some of the southern targets from a dark site.......

I've no chance of catching the rosette or orion at home as the view is blocked.

Thankfully the refractor seems to require a lot less fiddling and upgrades than my newt.... Although I'm dreaming about a ricardi reducer for it to go extra-wide and fast.

Anton