M27, against all odds I have a new image to share :-)

[FaB-Bo-Peep]

I was becoming very frustrated with the lack of clear skies recently so when yesterday's forecast showed a 5 hour window from 10 - 3 I was understandably excited and eagerly setup my equipment in anticipation. 10pm came but there was no break in the cloud to be seen  A further refresh of the forecast showed that the clear period had now moved and shrunk and was now anticipated to be between 12 - 2. Having gone to the trouble of setting everything up I could not admit defeat and pack up with nothing to show so I thought I'd simply wait. 12 came and a refresh of the forecast now showed that the clear period had disappeared completely!  AAARrrrrrrrrrgggggggghhhhhhhh the joys of British Weather!!! 😡 Even so I thought I'd wait just a little longer just in case. Shortly after I went outside expecting to bring everything back in but to my surprize I could see stars! I quickly polar aligned, did a 2 star alignment and headed straight for M27. 30 seconds appeared to be the maximum I could go to and it was not long before I realized my subs were getting lighter and lighter and the birds were getting louder and louder, yes it was dawn but at least I had something to show for my efforts.

The attached image is the result of a mere 14 minutes worth of 30 second, (RAW), subs captured from my severely light polluted back garden, stacked in Deep Sky Stacker, (with darks but no flats), and processed in StarTools.   

Although I would obviously have liked to capture for longer, as with my other recent targets this version is still by far the best I've managed of this target to date. I absolutely love the Skywatcher 250PDS and what it can achieve is so little time.

StarTools also keeps impressing me, making complex processing easy for novices like me and I'm sure I'm still not using it to its full potential.

Camera is a Canon Rebel XS, (1000D).

**** P.S. I've now added the original FITS file if anyone would like to have a play with the source data 🙂 ****

******P.P.S. I've now added a re-processed version taking a bit more time and learning as I go******

M27-FITS-32-INTEGER.fits.FTS

Edited June 11, 2019 by FaB-Bo-Peep
Adding source data file for others to play with.

[knobby]

Glad you stuck with it, well done 👍

[MarsG76]

Nice.... luck was on your side.. might not have been as long exposure as you'd like but like you said... still ended up with your best Dumbell.....

 

[fireballxl5]

Yes, that's a great image for just 7 mins exposure.

Hope you don't mind but I took your JPEG into PI for DBE, noise reduction and USM to get this...

[FaB-Bo-Peep]

3 hours ago, fireballxl5 said:

Yes, that's a great image for just 7 mins exposure.

Hope you don't mind but I took your JPEG into PI for DBE, noise reduction and USM to get this...

No I don't mind at all thank's as feedback is a very good way to learn 🙂

P.S. I've now added the original FITS file if anyone would like to have a play with the source data.

Edited June 9, 2019 by FaB-Bo-Peep

[FaB-Bo-Peep]

Ok so following fireballxl5's lead, (thanks for the ideas 🙂), I had another play in Startools to try and take similar actions and here is the resulting version 2.

I took more time with the "wipe" module applying it a couple of times with different parameters in an attempt to eliminate more of the vignetting / gradient and then found the "isolate" feature in the Life module which, (with the help of a mask over the nebula itself), did an amazing job of darkening the background and reducing the visible noise without adversely affecting the stars. I also tried to make the nebula a bit more colourful as I felt the original could do with a boost. Then a few other tweaks that I had applied to the original version finished off with the final noise reduction and voila!

I much prefer this version over the original but what do you think?