Cocoon Nebula

[johnrt]

18 hours of chipping away at this in some of the clearest skies we have had for 12 months, but due to work this ran over in to the full moon more than I would have liked, August has been pretty good so far for imaging. The death of my old QHY5 guide camera delayed things further, but I'm back on track with an Altair GPCAM, which if anyone is in the market for a cheap and good quality guide camera is hard to beat.

Imaged with all the usual kit and caboodle.

I hope you like

[Nicho]

Top Notch once again !  the time you have spent on this has really paid off .

I really like how well processed and delicate you have made the Nebular look.

Nick

[alan4908]

Very impressive John and much better than my recent attempt.  I do like your processing style and the starfield is magnificent ! 

Alan

[johnrt]

Thank you Alan & Nick,

The processing took as long as the imaging on this one, very difficult to get the colour balance of the red / pink nebula, blue reflection and keep some brown in the dust. It went through more tweaks and got scrapped and started from scratch more times than I remember!

[johnrt]

Anyone have any thoughts on if it would be worth adding Ha to this?

[reddoss]

Very nice image

[Uranium235]

Looks great John, very clean!

[johnrt]

Thank you both!

[PatrickGilliland]

NIce work John, stars are great and love the colour transition on the outer cocoon.

Paddy

[Barry-Wilson]

19 hours ago, johnrt said:

Anyone have any thoughts on if it would be worth adding Ha to this?

Super image John and finely processed with your natural light touch.

It would definitely be worth adding Ha as you'll highlight the Ha ribbon which bisects the nebula, giving a faint red broad stripe in the background will add a further refinement.

[swag72]

This looks great John - I love the nebula detail and the star colours are superb... it has everything that a top class image should have. Ha? Hell yes.... add the stuff. From what I've seen and my Ha in the past it really does add something..... go for it

[Davey-T]

Another excellent image John, I've spent / wasted all the recent good sky in our neck of the woods setting up my new mount, nearly there now 

Dave

[johnrt]

Thank you for the encouragement, I will see how this goes with adding more, but I have to say the bar is set *very high* on capturing the hydrogen ribbon;

This one from Sara....

and this one from Olly....

 

are enough to make you shudder at the thought of it!

 

[ollypenrice]

I love the image as is, John. For me it is perfectly done with the stretch, colour, sharpening and the rest of it in perfect taste. There would be some small gains in Ha in your close up framing but the really big Ha impact comes from the widefield. For this we really have to thank Fabian Neyer who made the wide Ha discovery. I did push mine quite a lot further in a later attempt.

The only think that I think you might be able to develop in LRGB would be the blue reflection nebula which required a vast amount of data.

Olly