My blurriest image in a long time - SH2-261 Lower's nebula

[graemlourens]

Hi everyone.

It hurts me a little to publish this one. Its a combination of rather little imaging time, very hazy skies (everybody firing coal here in Poland currently....) and rather weak HA signal for a emission nebula, but i didn't feel like giving up.

OIII is off the charts low, but due to tone mapping i pulled a rabbit out of a hat to make this one pop teal.
Just please do me a favour and look at it from a distance, its much sharper like that  It was rather unusual to process, having to fight basics even in HA (we all got spoilt with targets like NGC7000...)

It's a target i have not seen around here often so i'm trying to see what all of you think (actually, a search only reveals 3 images!)

Just so you know what i was fighting with. This is the (binned!) OIII (rotated):

Kind regards, Graem

[MarsG76]

Considering the haze and chimney smoke pollution, it looks fine.... are you using and sharpening/detail extraction software or PS plugins?

 

 

[graemlourens]

11 hours ago, MarsG76 said:

Considering the haze and chimney smoke pollution, it looks fine.... are you using and sharpening/detail extraction software or PS plugins?

 

 

Thank you for your feedback!

I use PI & PS nowadays, sharpening was only done very gently as there was just not enough signal to do usual sharpening. I had to use tons of layers to pull out more contrast in specific places (for example right side of the core) so there was mostly specific tasks in specific areas of the image, rather than the usual whole image+mask.

Kind regards, Graem

[gorann]

It looks quite good to me and also quite interesting, and clearly you have inspired others to have a go at this rather unusual target.

[MarsG76]

7 hours ago, graemlourens said:

Thank you for your feedback!

I use PI & PS nowadays, sharpening was only done very gently as there was just not enough signal to do usual sharpening. I had to use tons of layers to pull out more contrast in specific places (for example right side of the core) so there was mostly specific tasks in specific areas of the image, rather than the usual whole image+mask.

Kind regards, Graem

You did very well... Good processing.

[graemlourens]

On 2/8/2018 at 08:40, gorann said:

It looks quite good to me and also quite interesting, and clearly you have inspired others to have a go at this rather unusual target.

Thank you very much for your kind words.

On 2/8/2018 at 15:02, MarsG76 said:

You did very well... Good processing.

Thank you!

 

I will probably be letting this rest for a while, and then adding probably another 8-10 hours of HA in the hope that i can get way more detail out of this target, as i do like it a lot.

Reminds me of a cracked egg of the Movie 'Alien'!

Kind regards, Graem