NGC7000 and Pelican Nebula

[Buzzard75]

Had a short break in the weather and was able to try out the new IDAS NBX filter. I only had two hours of integration time, but I'm not mad at the result.

QHY247C OSC
IDAS NBX dualband filter
WO Redcat
iOptron CEM40EC (unguided)
40x180s lights, 20x darks, flats and dark flats
Processed in Pixinsight

 

Edited October 28, 2020 by Buzzard75

[ultranova]

Very nice image for 2 hours of data,

I like the wider field view that the Red cat gives,

why are you not overly keen on the result.

well done 

Paul

[Buzzard75]

2 hours ago, ultranova said:

Very nice image for 2 hours of data,

I like the wider field view that the Red cat gives,

why are you not overly keen on the result.

well done 

Paul

Thanks! I normally shoot mono with an ASI183MM and the Redcat. This was only my second or third image with this camera and processing OSC data, so I'm not used to processing it yet. I'll learn just like I did with the ASI183MM. The noise in the raw data seemed terrible. I don't know if it was my camera settings or just not enough data. My guess is the latter. The image seems a little soft as well, which is most likely due to undersampling. The Redcat benefits from extremely small pixels to get those fine details. All that being said, I actually am quite happy with it for only two hours of data.

Edited October 30, 2020 by Buzzard75

[ollypenrice]

More data would always help. I think the weakest part of the image is the dark dusty region from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pelican which looks slightly black clipped, though it just may not have enough signal for the very faint parts to be showing. Stars are nice and tight. How about a short run without the filter to let the blue stars show? These filters kill the broadband blue.

Olly

[Buzzard75]

3 hours ago, ollypenrice said:

More data would always help. I think the weakest part of the image is the dark dusty region from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pelican which looks slightly black clipped, though it just may not have enough signal for the very faint parts to be showing. Stars are nice and tight. How about a short run without the filter to let the blue stars show? These filters kill the broadband blue.

Olly

I really think it's lack of signal. There's just not much there with only 2 hours of data and a 51mm aperture. As for star colors, I know the dualband filters kill off a lot of the deeper blues. The IDAS NBX is a bit more narrow in the OIII band (10nm) than an Optolong L-eNhance (24nm), but not quite as narrow as an L-eXtreme (7nm). I tried my hand at editing it again with a softer stretch in Pixinsight to not clip the blacks so much. There's the one star in the Pelican that comes out fairly green no matter what I do for overall color balance. Last time I did an SCNR to remove the green and it obviously changed the color balance of the whole image. Again, probably using a dualband filter shifts it more from blue to the teal/green. The best I could do without broadband data for star color is a color mask and try to balance it out and make it a bit more blue. Again, not at all dissatisfied with this edit either. In fact, I think this one shows more of the background dust than the other one. This area of sky being in the Milky Way gets tough to tell what is dark background sky and what is galactic gas and dust.

We're supposed to have a few clear days in a row, but the moon will be fairly full. Not sure I want to try broadband or no filter even if it is just for star color. I have so many targets I want to image that I may just move on to something else and try and get a ton of data. This camera and focal length combo should fit the Heart and Soul completely in frame and I should be able to image it for at least a few hours each night.

Thanks for the constructive criticism. At this point, I think I prefer mono imaging and editing, but I'm still learning OSC processing. Here's a more high res image of the second edit. Or is it third? Forth maybe? I've lost count....