Cocoon variations

[MartinB]

Last year I captured the Cocoon Nebula with my 10"LX200 ACF at a focal length of around 1700mm using a QSI 532 camera.  I was pleased with the Ha but the colour was in short supply.  12x30mins Ha and 10x3mins binned x2 each colour channel.  I've now captured 7x10mins RGB unbinned with the same camera using a SW MN190 and 3 hours with the MN190 and an SX M26c.  All, very stupidly, in different orientations!

I've bodged them together and below are the original LX200 version, a version of this layered onto the MN190/QSI image and a final one with the MN190/QSI image layered onto the SX M26c data.

I've been trying to pull out the dust in and around the nebula.  If I paid a bit of attention to detail when setting up the  camera I'd have made life easier and had wider field images.  Anyway, I'm pretty pleased with the dust considering my LP.  I've played around with this bit of smoke endlessly going for bright and blue to pale and dusky and gone for the latter in the end.  The Ha is a bit subdued as a consequence.

Here's a blingy version with a bit more colour, cos I can't make up my mind

[ollypenrice]

Nice! I'm for the Bling, though I think it's drifted a little into the magentas. The dusty stuff is very tenuous so from LP you've done wonders.

Olly

[Steve 1962]

Very nice - my vote goes to the second one down. To me, there's more variation in the colour of the pink / orange nebula.

Steve

[MartinB]

Thanks Olly and Steve.  I like the second one Steve.  You might be right about the magenta Olly, I just gave it a pretty crude blue boost but the dust prior to that probably had a bit too much red in it which will be causing the problem.  

Nice to have data to play with now the weather's turned naff!

[BlurredPixells]

Wow, this is awesome, good job man

[MartinB]

Thanks BP