Bubble Nebula

[Bigfoot 9907]

Greetings all,

A beautiful clear sky last night and imaging the  Bubble Nebula was my plan, 25 x 5 min stubs and calibration frames using a Skywatcher 200p with an Atik 320e Camera. I absolutely adore the bubble shape and i have enclosed the processed picture. Unfortunately,  the bubble shape doesn't really stand out from the background as much as I would like. Processing is not one of my strong points and I have tried my best. Data was stacked in DSS and processed in PS CS6

If any of you gentlemen have some time, I would appreciate if you can have a go and see you can bring out the lovely bubble shape.. I have enclosed the link to the calibration frames

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B-Afq_Dv8HerWDJXbTNOVGRJdUU?usp=sharing

Many Thanks

Surinder

[Jonk]

 

27 minutes ago, Bigfoot 9907 said:

Processing is not one of my strong points and I have tried my best.

I like that. Well done.

[Knighty2112]

 Nice work. Well done!  

[Ouroboros]

Nice picture.  I've just had a play in photoshop to see what I can pull out of your DSS output file TIFF. I haven't re-DSS'd the data.  There is more in there I reckon, but it needs a better processor than me to pull it out satisfactorily.  I kept banging up against the noise as I processed the image.  

 

[Bigfoot 9907]

Many thanks Ouroboros,

yes, indeed it is a trade off between noise and the level of information visible. I had the same problem when I processed the image. 

[Ouroboros]

18 minutes ago, Bigfoot 9907 said:

Many thanks Ouroboros,

yes, indeed it is a trade off between noise and the level of information visible. I had the same problem when I processed the image. 

Yep.  A bit of clever noise reduction might help to produce a more pleasing stretched image.  

I don't know the 320e CCD at all. But I read somewhere that it has a lower red sensitivity than other cameras.  Since the bubble is an emission nebula could this be your problem?   

[Ouroboros]

Incidentally is your telescope properly collimated?  It looks like coma in the star shapes on the left side of the image and less on the right side.  I see that in my images but the coma is symmetrical in the corners (stars pointing in towards the centre) and reasonably round stars in the centre as long as my guiding is good. 

[wimvb]

Ran it through PixInsight and after some "quick 'n dirty" processing, pulled out this

There isn't much Ha in the background. To get a better image, you will need more data. This target is generally imaged in NB and not full colour. In full colour, the stars will saturate before the Ha shows its presence. You could try many more subs (probably 100+). This will get the noise down and allow more stretching. You could also use a Ha filter and just shoot Ha.

BTW, you probably have tilt in your optical train somewhere. The left hand side shows misshaped stars, while the right hand side is much cleaner.

Cheers,

 

[Bigfoot 9907]

Thank you Wimvberlo, again, noise appears to be the issue. I had planned to take more subs, but sadly, clouds are forecast for the foreseeable future. 

Yes, I noticed that too, stars are elongated on the LHS. Will need to check my optical train and collimate.

[Bigfoot 9907]

I have had another go, again trying to keep the noise down to an acceptable level. I think it's an improvement over my first attempt.