Lifting the Dumbell from the blackness of space

[MarsG76]

Hi all,

Sharing my final image version of the Dumbell nebula of data captured in September and one night in October. Imaged at F10 2032mm on my Nexstar 8SE and CGEM kit using a modded Canon 40D.

Initially I started with a few hours of capturing this nebula in RGB through a neodymium filter and processed the RGB image.

For the next 4 nights that were clear I captured 25 min subs in HAlpha and 25 min subs through a OIII filter. Stacked and processed the narrowband data, later adding a 50% addition of the HAlpha to the red RGB channel, from the OIII data the 50% of green component was added to green channel and 50% was added to blue from the blue component of OIII and the little, but distinct, data in the blue component of HAlpha.

Adding the narrowband data does seem to bring out some more detail, especially to outside the Dumbell shape, but I was dissapointed that I didn't pick up any more in the fringes, as I've seen in other images. I thought that surely doing 25minute subs would detect it.

I wonder whether it's because, at my location, the Dumbell never gets above maximum 30degrees above the northern horizon and I'm shooting through too much atmosphere that's blocking the faintest data, or the DSLR simply isn't sensitive enough...

In case you're wondering... Capturing on the modded 40D through baader CCD narrowband filters has some, little bit but there, blue data when capturing through the HAlpha filter and there's data in blue and green channels when using a CCD OIII filter.

Enough of my ramblings... Time for the image...

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Very nice result

[laudropb]

Very nice image. Thanks for posting.