LDN1251 - A dark nebula from a dark location

[jarbi]

Hi,

This is my first attempt at LDN1251 in Cepheus, a very nice but faint dark nebula. The image below is captured during our yearly astrocamp in Provence between 23-26th of september.

In total 8 hours of guided exposure ( L: 16x15min 1x1 binning, R,G,B: 8x10 min 2x2 binning ). I have used my Atik-11000 mono CCD on a Lichtenknecker FFC-150 F/3.5 Schmidt camera and Atik EFW2 filterwheel, mountedn on an EQ6 Atlas goto. I have captured all frames in Sgpro, and used PHD for guiding. Preprocessing: Astroart 5, Nebulosity ( darks/flats, color combination, basic stretching ). Final touches ( levels, curves, color balance, saturation, noise reduction ) in Photoshop.

I see now that even this amount of exposure is just barely enough to bring out faint details,

Cheers,

Janos

[lensman57]

These dark nebulae are a real test of the skills of the imager both in aquisition and processing. A very worthy image indded.

A.G

[Steve 1962]

That's very nice indeed - I just love the brown sooty stuff.

Steve

[lensman57]

Hi,

This is my first attempt at LDN1251 in Cepheus, a very nice but faint dark nebula. The image below is captured during our yearly astrocamp in Provence between 23-26th of september.

In total 8 hours of guided exposure ( L: 16x15min 1x1 binning, R,G,B: 8x10 min 2x2 binning ). I have used my Atik-11000 mono CCD on a Lichtenknecker FFC-150 F/3.5 Schmidt camera and Atik EFW2 filterwheel, mountedn on an EQ6 Atlas goto. I have captured all frames in Sgpro, and used PHD for guiding. Preprocessing: Astroart 5, Nebulosity ( darks/flats, color combination, basic stretching ). Final touches ( levels, curves, color balance, saturation, noise reduction ) in Photoshop.

I see now that even this amount of exposure is just barely enough to bring out faint details,

Cheers,

Janos

HI Janos,

I took the liberty of doing a bit of fiddling with the Jpeg, just a bit of colour adjustment and some dynamic enhance to get the dust out. It is by no means perfect but it is closer to what you should expect. I am sure that you could do a much better job with the linear data than I managed with the jpeg. Hope you don't mind.

Regards,

A.G

[jarbi]

HI Janos,

I took the liberty of doing a bit of fiddling with the Jpeg, just a bit of colour adjustment and some dynamic enhance to get the dust out. It is by no means perfect but it is closer to what you should expect. I am sure that you could do a much better job with the linear data than I managed with the jpeg. Hope you don't mind.

Regards,

A.G

Thanks A.G, I was hoping that there is more in it than I could bring out. I am still far from an imaging expert. I will certainly work further on the processing,

Cheers,

Janos