Flying Bat and Squid

[MartinB]

This has been a pig from start to finish!  The Flying Bat is a fairly humdrum, quite faint area of Ha nebulosity but within it is "The Squid", a huge and incredibly faint planetary nebula.  So faint that it was only discovered in 2011.  I knew it would need a lot of imaging time so had to go out whenever the opportunity arose despite sub optimal conditions.  The Ha was shot under a full moon and the OIII under generally quite poor sky conditions with high haze.  Well that's my excuses got in early!

Scope: Taq FSQ 106 with 0.73 reducer

Camera ZWO 294MM

Filters: Chroma 5nm Ha and OIII

Ha 60x10mins  OIII 97x10mins (plus about 3 hours of rejected subs)

The camera shows a distrubing pattern in the Ha flats which I just couldn't calibrate out in PI.  I tried every which way.  Checked and double checked Adam Block's videos and the excellent Light Vortex site.  Full manual pre processing, BPP, WBPP., all the requirements for CMOS pre processing met.  All dark frame opitmisation turned off.  Darks and flat darks properly matched.  No joy! Thank you to @alexbb for demonstrating that the patterning could be calibrated out in APP.  So I went my old faithful version of Maxim DL which calibrated everything beautifully.

Processing is a mixture of PI and PS and I found it quite a challenge.  I did take some liberties with the dodgy OIII data.

 

 

[alexbb]

Very nice! I'm happy to hear that you managed to overcome the calibration issues.

[MartinB]

Thanks again Alex.

 

[MartinB]

You spend ages starring at an image and still miss the Cyan stars.  Here's an update!

 

[alexbb]

Just now, MartinB said:

Thanks again Alex.

 

Your welcome! I'll try this evening to calibrate the files in PixInsight and see what's not working properly.

[Allinthehead]

Very nice Martin, great target that takes quite a bit of determination to complete.

[tomato]

Quote

 

That's a great result and I admire your patience and perseverance. I got rather carried away by @gorann's short integration version with the RASA8 and ASI2600 OSC  and tried to emulate his result with the same equipment and failed miserably. 

Some DSOs (at least from my neck of the woods) just need time...

[mackiedlm]

That is a great result. I've read of how difficult this one is but your squid is really pronounced and clear. Well done

[gorann]

2 hours ago, tomato said:

That's a great result and I admire your patience and perseverance. I got rather carried away by @gorann's short integration version with the RASA8 and ASI2600 OSC  and tried to emulate his result with the same equipment and failed miserably. 

Some DSOs (at least from my neck of the woods) just need time...

Even with a RASA and ASI2600MC the blue signal in the IDAS NSX filter is very very faint so you may need a dark site in addition to a lot of careful stretching of the blue channel.

This is a great reult Martin with a lot of structure in the squid! Not a lot of star colour and I get the same when working with a Ha and Oiii filters on a mono camera. Somehow the NSX dualband filter on the ASI2600MC automatically gives me what looks like rather natural star colours. Don't know why.

[AstroNtinos]

Thanks for sharing this magnificent image. Great job.

[MartinB]

Thank you everyone.

11 hours ago, gorann said:

Even with a RASA and ASI2600MC the blue signal in the IDAS NSX filter is very very faint so you may need a dark site in addition to a lot of careful stretching of the blue channel.

This is a great reult Martin with a lot of structure in the squid! Not a lot of star colour and I get the same when working with a Ha and Oiii filters on a mono camera. Somehow the NSX dualband filter on the ASI2600MC automatically gives me what looks like rather natural star colours. Don't know why.

Thank you Gorann.  It was your image that inspired me to have a go despite the fact that I live under a Bortle 5 sky.  Yes, it definitely needs some LRGB stars.  That is now at the top of my "to do list".

[peter shah]

Thats a tough target Martin........ you seem to have pulled out loads of O3 despite your "excuses". Knowing how difficult this one is to do, to say you have done a great  job is an understatement.