The Heart Nebula in NB with WideField Triple Imaging Rig

[Gina]

Some clear sky for a change last night enabled me to do some more imaging with my triple imaging widefield rig. Three vintage SLR lenses from the old film days with Astrodon NB filters and Atik mono CCD cameras.

1. Ha with Hannimar 135mm f2.8 at full aperture and 5nm filter with 460EX camera.
   
2. OIII with SMC Takumar 105mm f2.8 lens at f4 and 3nm filter with 314L+ camera.
   
3. SII with SMC Takumar 105mm f2.8 at f4 and 5nm filter with another 314L+
   

Guiding used a 200mm lens with SX Lodestar guide camera and PHD. Imaging was with 3 instances of Artemis Capture.

After an initial couple of subs each of 5m to ascertain exposure times, I set up for 20m Ha and 30m for each of OIII and SII and after checking that all was well with the longer exposures it was left running unattended for the rest of the night - a total run of nearly 6 hours.

There was a bit of thin cloud floating around at times and I think the visibility decreased a bit during the night as the day dawned with a fair amount of mist about (though mainly in the valley leaving us reasonably clear). This resulted in having to reject a number of subs and also the guiding accuracy declined a bit resulting in yet more subs rejected due to star trailing.

Here is the result with 17 x 20m Ha, 9 x 30m OIII and 11 x 30m SII. Stacked in DSS, stretched in Ps, aligned and scaled with RegiStar then combined and further processed in Ps.

[Stargazer33]

Very nice Gina. Shame you lost some of your subs. I love the colour (hubble palette?) in the centre of the heart.

[Gina]

Thank you Bryan Yes, summer nights are often not the best for transparency unless it's just after a shower of rain has cleared the muck out of the atmosphere. And yes, it's Hubble palette. I didn't put that in the thread title as I'll probably do some HOO processing too - many people prefer the more "natural" colour palette.

[nmoushon]

I'm one that prefers the natural color but this is a really great shot. I do like the different colors you can make with the narrowband set up. I think it really helps to show the different gases and materials that you can't easily pick out in natural color images. Well done.

[Gina]

Thank you

[iksose7]

That quite the widefield rig you have going there! And its produced a lovely image

[cfpendock]

That's very good Gina. You should be rightly pleased with what you have made, it seems to work a treat!

chris

[Coco]

Congrats... looks great.

[Gina]

Thank you everyone

[Gina]

Been working on the HOO version. Red has been taken from Ha + 33% SII - green was straight OIII and blue from OIII + 25% Ha. A number of extra processes applied to try to get a more colourful image and better stars. Noel's Actions and HLVG proved very useful plus the Lab Colour contrast increase. The stars still need extra treatment and I'm not very happy with the result. To get the best out of this palette needs more and better data.

[psemil]

I like the Hubble version

[Polar Bear]

It is good to watch an idea turn into a project and finally see the results. Great inspiring work all round Gina.

[andyo]

very nice Gina both are great but I prefer the first one

[Gina]

Thanks very much everyone