Iris Nebula - reprocessed

[wimvb]

Astrodarkness is still almost two months away. This is a reprocess of data I captured in October 2017 with my then new ASI174.

60 x 45 s each of RGB

163 x 30 s L

(3.6 hours total.)

All captured at -20 C, gain 300

ASI174MM-Cool with ZWO LRGB filters. Telescope SW 150-PDS on a SW AZ-EQ6 mount, no guiding

Captured with Ekos/Kstars, processed in PixInsight.

And the old version

[teoria_del_big_bang]

Definitely an improvement on what was already a great image.

Funnily enough I am over working in Sweden at present for a week or two. 

I bet it is almost impossible to get good data this time of year, daylight nearly all the time and where I am at least the weather not much better than UK.  🙂 

Steve

[sloz1664]

Nice image and well processed Wim. Just love the amount of blue in NGC 7023.

Steve

[wimvb]

36 minutes ago, teoria_del_big_bang said:

Definitely an improvement on what was already a great image.

Funnily enough I am over working in Sweden at present for a week or two. 

I bet it is almost impossible to get good data this time of year, daylight nearly all the time and where I am at least the weather not much better than UK.  🙂 

Steve

Thanks, Steve. At my latitude imaging is only possible in months with an "r", September through April. Summer nights are just too bright for anything but Ha. I have my gear in summer storage, atm.

39 minutes ago, sloz1664 said:

Nice image and well processed Wim. Just love the amount of blue in NGC 7023.

Steve

Thank you, Steve. Yes, the core is very blue. This time I put more effort into keeping it bright, while having colour in the dust surrounding it.

[carastro]

Really lovely image.  It must be so frustrating not to be able ti image at all during the summer months.

We have short nights and probably not astronomically dark, but at least you can get a few hours of imaging done.

Carole 

[wimvb]

3 minutes ago, carastro said:

Really lovely image.  It must be so frustrating not to be able ti image at all during the summer months.

We have short nights and probably not astronomically dark, but at least you can get a few hours of imaging done.

Carole 

Thanks, Carole.

Yes it is frustrating. Especially now that I have collimated the scope and cleaned the mount, but I'm keeping myself busy with various astro related projects. Reprocessing old data, for one.

[wimvb]

The Iris nebula is usually depicted with a lot more colour in the dark dust. In this version I pushed the red colours a bit more and lost the "Harry Potter Dementor" feel of the previous version. I also kept the image brighter. Too brigh perhaps?

Different, but I think I like the previous version better.

[Rodd]

I think it looks great Wim.  Possibly room for a bit of fine scale sharpening in the center--but not necessary.  Very nice.

Rodd

[Rodd]

On 09/07/2019 at 19:34, wimvb said:

The Iris nebula is usually depicted with a lot more colour in the dark dust. In this version I pushed the red colours a bit more and lost the "Harry Potter Dementor" feel of the previous version. I also kept the image brighter. Too brigh perhaps?

Different, but I think I like the previous version better.

I like the red. The dust iS reddish after all, no?

Rodd

[wimvb]

7 hours ago, Rodd said:

The dust iS reddish after all, no?

Rodd

No one has ever seen it in real life, so your guess is as good as mine. I've never even seen any spectral analysis of it. If an image is colour calibrated, the dust usually stretches as brown or red. But that doesn't mean it IS red. The stuff is so weak in any image, that any small error in colour calibration, amplifies in stretching. That, plus the fact that we astrophotographers have an aversion for anything green in space (we tend to tone down green colours), means that the "real" colour could be almost anything.

[Rodd]

2 hours ago, wimvb said:

No one has ever seen it in real life, so your guess is as good as mine. I've never even seen any spectral analysis of it. If an image is colour calibrated, the dust usually stretches as brown or red. But that doesn't mean it IS red. The stuff is so weak in any image, that any small error in colour calibration, amplifies in stretching. That, plus the fact that we astrophotographers have an aversion for anything green in space (we tend to tone down green colours), means that the "real" colour could be almost anything.

Really?