M27

[alan4908]

For my second attempt at M27 (aka Dumbell Nebula), I decided to go for an LRGB rendition with an Ha blend on both the Lum and Red channels.

When calibrating the data, I noticed that the Ha I'd acquired was much stronger than the RGB components, so to avoid a mainly red image consisting of Ha data, I decided to blend only a small fraction of the Ha. The image represents about 10 hours integration time and was taken with an Esprit 150.

I was quite pleased to see some of the inner structure coming through and the faint outer halo is just about visible. Comments and criticism are welcome.

Alan

 

LIGHTS: L:9, R:10, G:8, B:7 x 600s. Ha: 8 x 1800s. DARKS: 30; FLATS:40, BIAS:100

 

[wimvb]

Looks great. Just out of curiosity, how strong is the Ha?

[Red Dwarfer]

Wow , brilliant ! 

[alan4908]

29 minutes ago, wimvb said:

Looks great. Just out of curiosity, how strong is the Ha?

Thanks Wim.  I found that the Ha is very strong with this particular target, in my case it represents about 4 hours of the total integration time. If I'd included it even at 50% it would have obliterated the RGB data, so I decided to only include it at a high percentage in the outer halo region.

17 minutes ago, Red Dwarfer said:

Wow , brilliant ! 

Thanks   

[MarsG76]

excellent result.... very nice amount of detail you captured there.

 

[gorann]

Hi Alan

I expect that there is a lot of detail in your Ha data so you could try using the Ha also as a luminosity layer in Photoshop, probably not 100% (play with the opacity or fill slider)

[alan4908]

16 minutes ago, gorann said:

Hi Alan

I expect that there is a lot of detail in your Ha data so you could try using the Ha also as a luminosity layer in Photoshop, probably not 100% (play with the opacity or fill slider)

Thanks for the tip gorann.

Yes, I normally do this and generally find it quite beneficial. In this particular case, the data already incorporates the Ha in both the Lum and red channels (see the first sentence explaining the image),

Alan

[gorann]

Should have read you post more carefully but it explains how you managed to capture so much detail. Congrats on a great M27!

[alan4908]

1 hour ago, gorann said:

Should have read you post more carefully but it explains how you managed to capture so much detail. Congrats on a great M27!

Thanks Gorann.

Alan

[ollypenrice]

Super, delicately done.

Olly

[alan4908]

49 minutes ago, ollypenrice said:

Super, delicately done.

Olly

Thanks for the comment Olly