IC443 Jellyfish.

[ollypenrice]

Murder! If you ever so far forget yourself as to think of imaging this one seek medical help or the refuge of a monastery.

Those two stars splurge into vast blobby haloes all over the show and the Ha is totally dominant and hard to combine. I've often seen this imaged, as here, in HaRGB and thought, 'Pah, I can do better than that.' Well I can't and hats off to all those who've done it better.

21x15 Mins Ha and an hour per channel (6x10 Mins) colour at F3.9 in the Tak FSQ85. Imaged with some members of two south of England astrosocs whom I won't name since they may not be home yet.

Olly

[Shibby]

Well, you certainly seemed to have handled those stars pretty well in post processing! It's smooth, detailed and gloriously colourful!

[jnc71106]

looks good to me, but whats going on with your stars around the edge of the field Olly ?

[ollypenrice]

looks good to me, but whats going on with your stars around the edge of the field Olly ?

Oh 'eck, I hadn't seen that. It looks like coma but it isn't because the subs and stacks are fine. I think I'd have noticed it if it had appeared early on so I wonder if I've accidentally clicked on a lens correction filter or something by mistake. Eek, I don't want to do the whole darned thing again!! Thanks for pointing it up though.

Olly

[perfrej]

Too bad I can't get at it from the balcony. It is too much south and not quite high enough over the horizon... Looks good, anyway!

/per

[sologuitarist61]

Lovely

[Gina]

WOW! Wonderful image with perfect processing AFAICS Another terrific image from Olly

[TakMan]

Agree with the above - turned out fantastic Olly - as expected! How did you control those two pesky stars then..?

Just layers and different stretches or some trickery with PS 'select>modify', etc....?

I hadn't picked up on the star issue until I ventured over to your Smugmug site - hope it's easily resolved!

[Keiran]

Very nice Olly, them stars look like they were a pain, but i have seen far worse processing of this on. I think youve done a really good job of it.

Does the background have a red/orange tinge, or is that all faint Ha?

[Uranium235]

looks good to me, but whats going on with your stars around the edge of the field Olly ?

Exactly what I thought once id done some pixel peeping. At first I thought "no... it surely cant be rotation.. Olly does not rotate!" (its against the laws of physics)

But can I ask why the two brighter stars differ with their halos? One is on-axis, the other is slightly off. Does that have something to do with the angle at which the light enters the scope or is it related to the slightly iffy stars in the corners? Hope you can get this one fixed with minimum fuss.

[ollypenrice]

I think I have it nearly sorted. At some stage I've clearly grabbed a non-aligned image to layer in for some fix or other and not noticed that it was rotated. I might have done it twice, actually, because this still has some defects but I can live with this version.

The halo is different on all the subs and isn't connected with the rotation. It's just the angle of incidence I guess. Most images of this target in refractors show different haloes and I processed them individually as well because they were so severe. Lots of stretches and fiddles with Curves. I think these two are significantly harder to deal with than Alnitak.

The Ha layer clearly shows that the whole region is Ha filled but I clipped the red back a little to give the sky a more natural look around the nebulae.

Sorry about the boo-boo. Most embarrasing.

Olly

[Les Tilly]

You did s great job with it. The jelly is a pain to process with all the Ha and those pesky stars

Job done well

Les

[peter shah]

another beautifully balanced image olly

[mindburner]

that is just wonderful. I have never see the expanded image doe like this before and it looks amazing

[Mark72]

Wonderful work!

Mark

[symesie04]

Wow think you have done a amazing job dampining those "peskey" stars Olly, yet you have managed to keep their colour gloriously. To be honest I was having a Google the name of the stars and your image is pretty much as good as any of the Observatory images I came across. Brilliant stuff.

[ollypenrice]

Thanks all. Maybe a tad less saturated for the more natural look?

Olly

[Uranium235]

Looks great now its fixed, and I like the look of the natural version as the Ha red isnt too overpowering.

[MartinB]

Superb Olly, great FOV and framing. I never new there was quite so much nebulosity there. Lovely Ha and star colour.

Out of interest, why just 15min subs for the Ha? From your site you will be well short of getting over the read noise.

[Andyfx]

Top notch as always Olly, looks amazing.

[ollypenrice]

Superb Olly, great FOV and framing. I never new there was quite so much nebulosity there. Lovely Ha and star colour.

Out of interest, why just 15min subs for the Ha? From your site you will be well short of getting over the read noise.

Hmmm, you're right, really, though at F3.9 15 minutes isn't that bad. I also like to get a decent number to stack and as this was done with guests under a slightly risky sky I felt 30 minutes was a bit of a gamble. We always do 30 minutes Ha at F6.8 in the big one, however. I also need to update my 30 minute darks which takes an age!

BTW, this is one of those frustrating objects which just cannot hold its Ha detail in the transition to colour. The Ha-only is a glorious thing, rich in tiny details and very 3D. I think there may be a bit of 0111 in an outer shell, too, as with the Crescent.

Olly