NGC2174 The Monkey Head Nebula

[Barry-Wilson]

Some relief between weather fronts in South Devon enabled me to capture enough data for this Hubble palette composition.  The data has been captured over a couple of weeks since 30th November, almost sub-by-sub in whatever breaks materialised.  Orion traverses above my house and with a neighbouring sycamore tree I only ever have a short window to image.  Having a relatively low altitude doesn't help with gradients and seeing either, so I am pleased with the result.

The portrait presentation convinces my brain that I'm looking at the side view of a monkey, with hand to mouth and wavy hair.  We do love to seek out patterns . . .

Details:

• WO 132FLT at F7 with TMB flattener
• 10 Micron GM1000HPS
• QSI683wsg-8 with 5nm Astrodon NB filters
• 12 x 1200s each of Ha/SII/OIII for a total integration of 12 hours
• SGP and PixInsight
• Totnes, South Devon

[steppenwolf]

A lovely delicate image, Barry, the monkey's 'hair' looks nice and wispy. I have never noticed the 'hand to mouth' part before but I see it now. Excellent!

[PhotoGav]

Beautiful image Barry. How very frustrating with the brief positional opportunity to catch the Orion area, but you have done it justice here. I’m afraid I have to admit that this target never really looks like a monkey’s head to me. I can see hair, perhaps, but that’s it! If anything it’s more a lion’s head...!

Does this image mean that southern England is being more productive than southern Spain?!

[Barry-Wilson]

33 minutes ago, steppenwolf said:

A lovely delicate image, Barry, the monkey's 'hair' looks nice and wispy. I have never noticed the 'hand to mouth' part before but I see it now. Excellent!

Cheers Steve.

13 minutes ago, PhotoGav said:

Beautiful image Barry. How very frustrating with the brief positional opportunity to catch the Orion area, but you have done it justice here. I’m afraid I have to admit that this target never really looks like a monkey’s head to me. I can see hair, perhaps, but that’s it! If anything it’s more a lion’s head...!

Does this image mean that southern England is being more productive than southern Spain?!

- not so, just processing IC447 and we are in the midst of a couple of other targets, one of which is a mosaic.  In the UK we labour to get over 10+ hours, Spain in the few weeks we've been imaging there, you gather 20+ hours with relative ease . . . but then Extramadura does have troubles with drought etc.  Life is full of trade-offs . . .

Glad to know that the SGP/Dome slaving/homing appears to be fixed and I hope that means you can image with a little less stress and worry.

[PhotoGav]

I thought as much, I look forward to further Spanish images. Yes, it is a big relief to have the dome problem sorted at last. To celebrate I have started a mosaic project! I am pretty sure that your Spanish mosaic will be on here long before mine!!

[swag72]

Very nice Barry - I like the way that you have processed this and made a really pleasing image of something that I often find very flat....... hats of you to, a great image     Nice to see that the UK can still produce the goods as well  

[wxsatuser]

I normally see the Monkey quite small so nice to see it in all that detail.

[triton1]

I like it a lot defo looks like he’s scratching his chin,well done?

[MarsG76]

great detail.. nice work.

 

[Barry-Wilson]

3 hours ago, swag72 said:

Very nice Barry - I like the way that you have processed this and made a really pleasing image of something that I often find very flat....... hats of you to, a great image     Nice to see that the UK can still produce the goods as well  

Thank you Sara.  Not too sure of I've left a touch too much green in there . . .

Thank you wxsatuser, John and Mr Mars - much appreciated.

[MartinB]

Spot on as always Barry, so much detail but without it looking wrung out.  I don't know why everyone has an aversion to green in false colour, it is Ha at the end of the day so it seems a bit odd to eliminate it.  You could make it gold and blue very easily but I think you have done a good job resisting the temptation

[Petergoodhew]

Fabulous Monkey Barry!  I wish I knew how you get such depth into an image.  I'm now inspired to add this to my to-do list and have a go with it.

Good to see that your Totnes gear is still being put to good use.  Bizarrely I find that it's often clear here whenever its cloudy in Spain - both conditions being equally rare!