Barnard's Loop and Angelfish in Ha

[Knight of Clear Skies]

Took this shot over Christmas but only got around to processing it this morning. This is just over an hour of 3 minute subs, using a 50mm lens at f4 on my modded Canon 1100D and 12nm clip-in filter. 30 dark bias (which made a big difference, I accidently stacked without them first time around) but no other calibration frames.

I'm really pleased with how it's come out. There is a fair bit of depth to it, the fainter extensions of the loop are showing up, the brightest part is well defined and the Angelfish merits its name. Can just make out Lincoln's Chair above the Horsehead.

I'm not sure if my processing workflow made any sense, I don't know the correct way of processing Ha data from a DSLR. I raided the blue and green channels a bit to stop M42 from blowing out but this may have added noise to the image. I had a bit of a problem with a couple prominent bands but Noel's actions mostly fixed it.

Hope you like it, my next step is to see if I can align it in PS with the colour image I took a while back, and see if I can blend some more Ha into the red channel.

[swag72]

Oh that's a stunner!!! Love it!! Great depth, fantastic to see it all together..... Well done indeed...  

[Star101]

Very nice image. Not often one see's the whole of Barnard's Loop and more in great detail.

 

Thanks for sharing.

[laudropb]

Very nice image. Nice to see the whole loop.

[Pete Presland]

Magnificent image, you are correct about the Angel fish!

[symesie04]

Really nice image, the loop has come out great and its a delight to see the angelfish. It does seem to have a bit of a grain on it though almost like a texture to it. But its still a cracker? any RGB plans?

[Knight of Clear Skies]

Thanks all, really pleased with this one. I also like viewing my widefields on World Wide Telescope, like this. By choosing different data sets and adjusting the crossfade I can see how it fits into the wider sky and look for features in other wavelengths. For example, the Angelfish is thought to be a supernova remnant. This isn't obvious in visual wavelengths but in IR there is a giant dust ring.

On 2/24/2017 at 12:56, symesie04 said:

Really nice image, the loop has come out great and its a delight to see the angelfish. It does seem to have a bit of a grain on it though almost like a texture to it. But its still a cracker? any RGB plans?

Yes, there is a bit of noise but it presents quite well in up to 1600x1200 res I think. I'll see if I can tweak it some more, and also try to suppress the off-centre halo around Betelgeuse and Rigel. I have some RGB data from a couple years ago, I'll have a go at blending in the Ha.