M57 (LHaRGB) - Sept/Oct 2019

[geoflewis]

Hi all,

This is my first attempt at capturing the outer halo of the Ring Nebula (M57). I was unsure how to process and combine the data, so pretty much it was trial and error with me making it up as I went along.
My initial capture of Ha data was using too short (5 min) subs, so even though I had over 30 of them, I still struggled to show the halo and blending with the RGB data was not succesful. After taking advice over here I increased the exposures to 15 mins and shot 15 new Ha subs. The halo was more clearly defined, but the combined HaR overwhelmed the core of the nebula, so I processed the RGB separately and used layers to retain the blue core. Finally I layered the L.

I learnt some stuff along the way, but still I'm really not sure what I'm doing when blending Ha and L with RGB.

Thanks for looking. All and any feedback is very welcome.

Regards, Geof

[jock1958]

Nice one! Is that a little spiral arm galaxy to the lower left?

[MarsG76]

What a cool little planetary... with a spiral galaxy too boot....

 

[geoflewis]

5 hours ago, jock1958 said:

Nice one! Is that a little spiral arm galaxy to the lower left?

 

3 hours ago, MarsG76 said:

What a cool little planetary... with a spiral galaxy too boot....

 

Thanks both. The plate solve in Astrobin identifies the small spiral galaxy as IC1296.

Cheers, Geof

[MartinB]

That is excellent.  I know just how hard that halo is to pull out and you have processed this very nicely, despite your lack of confidence in your abilities!

[geoflewis]

4 hours ago, MartinB said:

That is excellent.  I know just how hard that halo is to pull out and you have processed this very nicely, despite your lack of confidence in your abilities!

Thanks Martin,

I appreciate the feedback and after comments on another forum I had another go at it, so here it is....

I tried to control star sizes better and preserve the colour in the nebula core, whilst also showing a bit more structure in the outer shell. The changes are subtle, but I prefer this version, so what do you think?

Cheers, Geof

[don4l]

53 minutes ago, geoflewis said:

Thanks Martin,

I appreciate the feedback and after comments on another forum I had another go at it, so here it is....

I tried to control star sizes better and preserve the colour in the nebula core, whilst also showing a bit more structure in the outer shell. The changes are subtle, but I prefer this version, so what do you think?

Cheers, Geof

You have raised it up a whole level.  It was good before, but that is a real improvement.

[geoflewis]

2 minutes ago, don4l said:

You have raised it up a whole level.  It was good before, but that is a real improvement.

Thanks Donal, I appreciate the very encouraging feedback. Cheers, Geof