HGC 7380 - The Wizard Nebula in HaHO

[AndyThilo]

Captured over 2 nights, but only used the 2nd night for Ha. Total exposure time of 5 hours. My plan was to have around 8 hours total, but last night was hazy and many subs were thrown away so I instead used the good ones for Ha.

Specs:

• 101 x 180s Lights
• 40 x Darks
• TS Optics Photoline 130 Triplet @ f7/910mm with Hotech SCA Flattener
• QHY268C @ -20C
• Stellardrive EQ6-R Pro
• WO 50mm guide scope with QHY462C camera
• IDAS NBX Dual Band Filter

Fully processed in Pixinsight with final export in Lightroom. Quite a process in PI, trying to figure out in my head the best way as I'm still very much a PI noob and learning all the time. In the end I first did star alignment on the 2 separate light masters, then cropped, rotated and DBE. Both images matched perfectly so all good so far.

I then processed the Ha image, extracted the Ha, removed the stars and processed the data to give a nice image. I've started noise reduction using TGV following the guide by Visible Dark. It works incredibly well, and gives better results than I've seen before.

After the HO image was processed, I experimented with different levels of Ha addition in Pixelmath. I settled on 0.4Ha + HO. Did some final tweaks to contrast and saturation to give the attached HaHO image 🙂

All in all, took me about 3 hours to process including the 2 stacks. I will 100% revisit this on a decent night as I'd really like to have 8 hours on this at least.

Edited December 28, 2020 by AndyThilo

[simmo39]

One of my fav targets. Great image.

[AndyThilo]

21 hours ago, simmo39 said:

One of my fav targets. Great image.

Cheers Simon

[callisto]

Nicely done 

 

Mark

[AndyThilo]

6 hours ago, callisto said:

Nicely done 

 

Mark

Thanks 😊 

[teoria_del_big_bang]

Very nice image. 🙂 

Steve

[TerryMcK]

I understand the Ha but what is HO?

[AndyThilo]

10 hours ago, TerryMcK said:

I understand the Ha but what is HO?

Well it was shot with an NBX filter which is dual narrowband, receiving only Ha and Oiii data. 

[AndyThilo]

16 hours ago, teoria_del_big_bang said:

Very nice image. 🙂 

Steve

Cheers Steve 😊