Soul Nebula - IC 1848 in false colour 'Quality Street Edition'

[TakMan]

Taken over 6 nights (18th Nov-9th Dec) whilst chasing clouds, trying to sort out a persistent northerly DEC drift with the guys on the PHD2 forum and then processed over the Christmas / New Year break.

Also went looking for an old version of Ps CS5 in the loft, now loaded onto a Windows 7 laptop (that I use to guide) so I could try HLVG and the newly purchased StarSpikes Pro 4 on a small holiday discount (not usually available to those of us Mac based).

For a processing reference, I found a lovely RGB broadband image of this taken target from a dark sky and tried to replicate it with my narrowband data.

Pre-processed, aligned and stacked and combined on Mac, in the still new to me APP (tried lots of different variations which took best part of two hours!) I think it does a better job than Nebulosity... but it does take a hell of a lot longer to do its thing!

I do like APP's light pollution removal and combine routine (I also played with adjusting the ratios/power of the different channels), before outputting to Photoshop CC2017.

So a pure 'RGB' image, no Luminance file and as I'm sure you can see, I wasn’t overly careful with my processing/masking as I went as this was just an experiment... that ended up taking an hour and a half to complete. Definitely not one for the purists on here and diffraction spikes added as well, sacrilege using an FSQ 😉

Oh, well, I quite like it and that's all that matters. Will be trying other techniques on this including Ha/OIII/OIII, the Cannistra method which I've always liked and a Hubble Pallette version.... without the spikes !

All 600 sec subs (dark and flat frame calibrated)

Takahashi FSQ106-ED + dedicated F/R @f/3.6

SBIG STF8300M + Baader filters- controlled via the defunct MicroProjects Equinox Image.

Guided with an SBIG ST-i / SkyWatcher ST-80 via PHD2

'Scopebuggied' Takahashi EM400 mount - controlled via CduC.

The best 69 used from 78, split as:

Ha = 18x

OIII = 24x although some were slightly out of focus and 12 I hadn’t aligned properly on a separate session so meant a crop of the image - what an idiot!

SII 27x

So 11 1/2 hours worth, I think that’s my longest exposure to date.... all from a fairly light polluted back garden.

Combined as Ha-R, SII-G, OIII-B

Gave it plenty of Christmassy / New Year oomph and saturation (willed on by far too many chocolatey goodies!) to give it that lush RGB feel as if captured under dark skies...

Happy New Year to you all !

Damian

 

Edited January 3, 2020 by TakMan

[teoria_del_big_bang]

Very nice image, and a happy 2020 to yourself as well 🙂 

Steve

[Stargazer33]

Ooh! The pinky fudge one. My favourite.

Oh, nice image too! 😁