Cave Nebula SH2-155 in HaLRGB

[glowingturnip]

Hi all,

Here's my latest effort with my new kit, taken in September:

15x600s Ha, 10x420s L, 9 each x300s R, G and B, all 1x1 binned.  Equipment as per sig, processed in Pixinsight.  My second attempt at combining Ha with LRGB data, and I think it worked a bit better this time.

 

The Cave Nebula (Sh2-155) is a diffuse nebula in the constellation Cepheus, within a larger nebula complex containing emission, reflection, and dark nebulosity. It is an ionized H II region with ongoing star formation activity, at an estimated distance of 2400 light-years.  It has been suggested that radiation from the hot O-type star HD 217086 is compressing the region, triggering the formation of a new generation of stars.  The bright red part of the Cave is light emission from excited Hydrogen gas, with some reflection of starlight also present.  The region is partly obscured by dark foreground clouds of dust and gas.  The name "Cave Nebula" was coined for this object by Patrick Moore, presumably derived from photographic images showing a curved arc of emission nebulosity corresponding to a cave mouth.

Hope you enjoy !

 

[Droogie 2001]

Lovely image. 

If you are interested the Astro Imaging Channel most recent session was on this very target. I watched it last night, you may find some useful tips.

 

[glowingturnip]

cheers, will have a watch of that

[glowingturnip]

revisiting this, since I think I may have over-cooked the saturation first time round - what do people think of this one ?

you can compare both side-to-side in my Flickr stream.

 

I quite like the first one for its vibrancy, but maybe it's a bit too red, it doesn't seem to have taken the fancy of the good folks on Flickr.

I've been using the new Pixinsight Photometric Colour Calibration tool (plate-solves the image, compares the star colours to catalogue colours and adjusts the white balance to match) - so I know that the white balance is good in both cases, and there is a lot of Ha around, but maybe I've stood on the 'saturate' pedal too heavily in trying to avoid the dreaded Ha salmon-pink.

So do you prefer the first one or second one more ?  Second one still too saturated, or not enough ?  Any other comments and cc welcome !

 

Cheers,

Stuart