Elephants Trunk Nebula

[Anne S]

Here's my version of the Elephant Trunk nebula imaged over 3 nights last weekend. 16x600 seconds for Ha,Oiii, and Sii shown in the Canada France Hawaii palate (Ha-red, Oiii-green and Sii-blue. My first attempt with sgpro. 

SXVR694 and Altair Wave 102 on Cem60ec Mount.

I'm struggling with autofocus, so I think focus could have been a bit sharper.

[rickwayne]

OK, so that gradient from Ha to OIII wasn't just me -- whew! I have gotten some fair-decent Ha on this target but my OIII was way underexposed (autoguiding inop) and I thought the overall balance shift from the "bottom" to the "top" of the trunk was some kind of artifact. Pretty wild colors here -- cool palette choice. Agree that the softness is likely due to focus. Suppose you could also do star removal to process them independently to get the diameters down, but I kinda like the look.

[Anne S]

Thanks. I also had some misalignment of the images as I couldn't get Maxim dl to centre where I was on the 1st night, that's why I switched to sgpro for the remaining 2 nights.  I'm not as good guiding using Phd2 as with Maxim. I also did a bicolour version, see below. It's more muted!