New to mono, 1st attempt at SHO - Eagle Nebula (M16)

[AnakChan]

It's been a long while since I've posted in this forum. I've been imaging with a CentralDS A7S cooled mirrorless for the past 5 years through my Takahashi µ250CRS. This year I took the plunge into a proper dedicated astro camera with the ZWO ASI6200MM with the EFW2 2"x7, & OAG rig. As this is my intro to a proper dedicated astro camera, I took the easy way out of getting an ASIAir Pro as I have no portable PC to run SGP/N.I.N.A, and the ASIAir Pro was easier to learn than the the other two more sophisticated software.

Despite having my rig in Feb, I had to sort out some teething backfocus and tilt issues which were difficult to troubleshoot. I finally got the right sized adapter earlier this month - it also means for the past 5 years I've been shooting with my A7S with an adapter backfocus of 5mm too short!

As I live under Bortle 6 skies, I decided to try NB imaging for the first time and here's the SHO result. Specs are as follows :-

Takahashi µ250CRS (2500mm/F10)

Vixen AXD mount

ASI6200MM/EFW2/ZWO 2" NB Filters

ASI174MM Mini guide camera

ZWO ASIAir Pro for Acquisition control

Sensor Temp: -10C

Gain: 0 (Offset 0)
Bin: 1x1
Ha: 24x600sec (4 hrs)

Oiii: 56x300sec (4.67 hrs)

Sii: 30x600sec (5 hrs)
Darks/Flats/FlatDarks: 50 subs

Total Integration: 13.67 hrs

 

Processed in PixInsight 1.8.8-5

Edited July 27, 2020 by AnakChan

[MarkAR]

Excellent image though I am seeing some pinky red to the stars.

[AnakChan]

Cheers. I tried hard to get rid of the magenta and I found some stars were able to remove easily whilst others (which you see), didn't. If I tried continuing to remove the magenta on the remaining stars, then the ones that had been removed would start to develop a blue halo. So after awhile, I stopped and left it.

As mentioned, this is my first time trying SHO (or 1st time trying mono in fact), and I was inundated with the plethora of different workflows.

[x6gas]

Well blimey that's a lovely image... and for a first SHO... well you wouldn't know.

Stars are a bit red in places - maybe a job for selective colour in Photoshop? - but what the heck... it's a fantastic image.

[Allinthehead]

I wish that my first efforts looked this good. 

[carastro]

Excellent first mono image.

Carole 

[AnakChan]

Thank you all for the kind words and words of encouragement. I have to say that when it comes to processing, I still don't know what I'm doing but just trying different workflows. I may see what I'm doing wrong in trying to fix the star colours. Prior to this I worked on OSC only and never tried (& never considered) splitting to separate mono channels.

[AnakChan]

During the rainy weather last month, I thought I'd reprocess the M16 I took back in mid July last year as I had started learning some newer techniques from the Astro Imaging Channel and Chris Foster's PI workflow. Overall I think i managed to pull out more colours and detail out of the pix and pleased with the results. I've managed to control the magenta halo around the stars better than the original attempt too.

[peter shah]

Stunning!! although personally I do prefer your first rendition

[AnakChan]

Thank you Peter. Surprising you prefer the 1st rendition :D.