A very lonely Monkey Head from last night

[gorann]

Here are the sum of snap shots taken of the Monkey Head Nebula last night just before it fell below the forest and the clouds moved in. Taken with my Canon 300mm f/4 (with a Canon 60D and Astronomik 12nm Ha clip filter ISO1600) and 5" refractor (with a Canon 60Da and Baader 6nm Ha filter ISO1600) sitting side by side. 4 x 15 min on the telephoto lens and 6 x 25 min on the refractor, so totally 250 min.

Amazing how much empty space (not counting stars) it is around that nebula.

Colour data still to be collected....

Cheers

Göran

[Sunshine]

Looks fantastic! thank for posting as i completely forgot about the monkey head for years! so overshadowed by its famous friend to the south M42.

[tooth_dr]

That’s very monkey like. Well done, fantastic result. 

[Demonperformer]

Very nice. What software do you use to combine the different data sets? 

[gorann]

8 hours ago, Sunshine said:

Looks fantastic! thank for posting as i completely forgot about the monkey head for years! so overshadowed by its famous friend to the south M42.

Thanks Sunshine! M42 is long gone from my latitude but the Monkey head is still possible to image before midnight - but here is does not get dark until 10pm so not much time.

[gorann]

7 hours ago, tooth_dr said:

That’s very monkey like. Well done, fantastic result. 

Thanks, much appreciated!

Yes, the monkey looks more monkey like from a distance.

[gorann]

5 hours ago, Demonperformer said:

Very nice. What software do you use to combine the different data sets? 

Thanks!

To merge the images I first need to downscale the refractor image (FL 750mm) so the same scale as the Canon lens (FL 300mm). It may work by just multiplying the image size with 300/750, but I usually measure a distance (ruler tool in PS) between two distant stars in each image to get a more precise value for the difference in image scale. After that I usually go to PI and just do a star alignment with the wide field image as template. That sometimes fails and PI says it cannot find matching stars for reasons unknown to me (like in this case). If that happens I have to do it manually in PS in several iterations. Starting by pasting the smaller image as a layer on the larger one and setting transparency to 50%. Then it is just to rotate a bit (and also do minor adjustments of the image scale) and try again until I have a match. Before I finally paste in the image layer I use curves to get the background sky at exactly the same level of brightness.

Cheers

Göran

EDIT: This is what the 5" refractor image looks like:

[Rodd]

Nice capture--a strange nebula indeed--it sort of just begins and ends.  You have caught much of the dust lanes and dark structures--especially in the refractor data (due to the scale).

Rodd

[gorann]

12 hours ago, Rodd said:

Nice capture--a strange nebula indeed--it sort of just begins and ends.  You have caught much of the dust lanes and dark structures--especially in the refractor data (due to the scale).

Rodd

Thanks Rodd!

While waiting for clear dark skies for catching colour data, which with the current outlook may not happen until September (since it becomes too light up here in the summer), I entertained myself with making an artificial colour version. After all this nebula is mainly red Ha:

[MikeODay]

Very nice Goran.  I particularly like the artificial colour version.

[gorann]

 

1 hour ago, MikeODay said:

Very nice Goran.  I particularly like the artificial colour version.

Thanks Mike, much appreciated!

[Rodd]

7 hours ago, gorann said:

Thanks Rodd!

While waiting for clear dark skies for catching colour data, which with the current outlook may not happen until September (since it becomes too light up here in the summer), I entertained myself with making an artificial colour version. After all this nebula is mainly red Ha:

Pretty nice--so its the actual color?  And the narrow band is the false color!  Is this a bicolor using Ha and OIII?  Looks very clean.  The deatils are preserved well.

Rodd

[gorann]

On 05/04/2018 at 17:20, Rodd said:

Pretty nice--so its the actual color?  And the narrow band is the false color!  Is this a bicolor using Ha and OIII?  Looks very clean.  The deatils are preserved well.

Rodd

Rodd, it is only Ha data with some Photoshop magic.....

[Rodd]

6 minutes ago, gorann said:

Rodd, it is only Ha data with some Photoshop magic.....

Oh... using only Ha.  Sara Wager did that a while back to good effect.  I have n clue how its done, but  wish I did!

Rodd

[gorann]

12 hours ago, Rodd said:

Oh... using only Ha.  Sara Wager did that a while back to good effect.  I have n clue how its done, but  wish I did!

Rodd

Yes, I remeber seeing Sara's image and thought that if she gets away it, it must be allowed, so I have given it a try a few times when I have been lacking RGB data. Not sure how to do it in PI, but in PS I take the B/W Ha image, make sure it is in RGB mode and then start working on the curves of the colour channels. I then use the dust & scrateches filter to remove all stars and then put the original Ha image on top as luminance to bring the stars back. 

[Rodd]

1 hour ago, gorann said:

Yes, I remeber seeing Sara's image and thought that if she gets away it, it must be allowed, so I have given it a try a few times when I have been lacking RGB data. Not sure how to do it in PI, but in PS I take the B/W Ha image, make sure it is in RGB mode and then start working on the curves of the colour channels. I then use the dust & scrateches filter to remove all stars and then put the original Ha image on top as luminance to bring the stars back. 

Cant do it in PI then.  An Ha image can't be in RGB mode.  Maybe if you combined the Ha and use that as the r,g,b it might then have an r.g and b channel.  I'll have to try.

Rodd

[gorann]

1 hour ago, Rodd said:

Cant do it in PI then.  An Ha image can't be in RGB mode.  Maybe if you combined the Ha and use that as the r,g,b it might then have an r.g and b channel.  I'll have to try.

Rodd

Or get PS. I finally gave in and got PI half a year ago. Trying to get the best of two worlds

[Rodd]

9 minutes ago, gorann said:

Or get PS. I finally gave in and got PI half a year ago. Trying to get the best of two worlds

I don't want a subscription.  Besides, the earning curve would do me in....not much learning curve life left in me.

Rodd