My first narrowband image (and a funny coincidence)

[Bobinius]

Hi guys,

Here is my first narrowband image, which is exactly the same target and has a similar framing to John's (Starwiz) and also the same camera! - what are the odds? So as promised John, here is my try on the nebula.  Shot with my 115 Altair Astro Wave refractor. I wasn't being careful and the OIII series had a tilt compared to the rest so unfortunately I had to crop the image.

 

Altair AstroWave 115 ED on AZ EQ 6 0.8 Altair reducer

Guiding Altair Astro 60mm + GPCAM3 and PHD2

ASI 1600 mm pro 7nm Zwo Halpha, OIII, SII ZWO filters

52x300s Ha, 52x300sx OIII, 48x300s SII at -10, unity gain 139

50 bias, darks, 30 flats

Pixinsight; Photoshop

I faced 2 'existential' problems:

- what are the solutions for decreasing the star size in SII (of course better focus, I only shot a few frames with my new focuser) and consequently in the final image?

- the combined image has a green tone. I decreased it a bit with SCNR, but I was wondering if this is an artefact or the real image (I lean heavily on a realistic and scientific approach to astrophotography, over a liberal aesthetic one; that's why I love pixinsight). Since Halpha is green if we reduce it we are actually cropping data. I can understand the green reduction with a Bayer matrix and OSC that have 2 green pixels, but monochrome should be different, no?.

Thanx for your advice. And I hope you like it!

Bogdan

 

 

Edited July 15, 2019 by Bobinius
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[MarsG76]

Great image.. I can't believe that this is your first DSO... awesome.

 

[Bobinius]

40 minutes ago, MarsG76 said:

Great image.. I can't believe that this is your first DSO... awesome.

 

Thanx ! Not my first DSO, but my first narrowband. A lot of work went into it including a clear night when I found out in the morning that SQPro stopped after 45 minutes... Don't forget to activate the Recovery button : )

[Starwiz]

3 hours ago, Bobinius said:

So as promised John, here is my try on the nebula. 

Fantastic image Bogdan and a wider field than mine with your scope.  Nice star colours too.

You must be well chuffed with that!

John

[Bobinius]

7 hours ago, Starwiz said:

Fantastic image Bogdan and a wider field than mine with your scope.  Nice star colours too.

You must be well chuffed with that!

John

Thanx John ! I am pretty pleased that it finally payed off. The stars need some improvement, they are pretty bloated and I finally obtained a very good guiding only for the second part of the acquisition.

 

best regards

Bogdan

[Starwiz]

2 hours ago, Bobinius said:

Thanx John ! I am pretty pleased that it finally payed off. The stars need some improvement, they are pretty bloated and I finally obtained a very good guiding only for the second part of the acquisition.

 

best regards

Bogdan

The stars were better than mine as I didn't get rid of the magenta colour.

I'm going to experiment with star removal on my next target.  So, removing the stars from the narrowband data, then bring them back in as RGB, but trying to capture the RGB with shorter shutter speeds so the stars don't become too bloated.   I'm also going to try using the Ha as a luminance layer to see if I can sharpen up the image.

Olly discussed a technique for luminance in the post below which looks very interesting, so I will try that too. 

John

 

[Bobinius]

Thanx, I’ll have a look.