Tulip Nebula

[alan4908]

The Tulip Nebula (aka Sh2-101) is about 6000 light years away in Cygnus and consists of a collection of hydrogen, oxygen and sulphur gases. Ultraviolet light from nearby young stars ionise the gas creating red, green and blue colours, making it a popular narrowband target. In particular, the very bright blue/white star HDE 227018 shown near the centre of the image creates a bluish/violet bubble within the nebula.

Since I prefer natural colours, I decided to image using LRGB techniques but to enhance details and contrast, I also decided to capture HII emissions via an Ha filter which I subsequently blended into the red and luminescence channels.  The result is below represents 19 hours integration time and was taken with my Esprit 150.

For those that may be interested: after watching Adam Blocks tutorials on the Pixinsight script Normalize Scale Gradient www.adamblockstudios.com/categories/PixInsight - this is my first image using this script – it really does appear to give more realistic sub frame weightings and facilitates easier removal of light gradients.  

Alan

 

LIGHTS: L:21, R:17,G:15,B:13 x 600, Ha: 16 x 1800s; BIAS:100; FLATS:40; DARKS:30 all at -20C.

 

[Laurin Dave]

Very nice Alan.. I agree,  the NSG script is great, as you say it makes gradient removal easier and also helps brings out faint details.. 

[alan4908]

22 hours ago, Laurin Dave said:

Very nice Alan.. I agree,  the NSG script is great, as you say it makes gradient removal easier and also helps brings out faint details.. 

Thanks for the comment Laurin.  Yes, the NSG script is definitely impressive and it will now form part of my standard processing in PI.

Alan

[assouptro]

Love the star colour! 
great job Alan 

thanks for sharing 

Bryan 

[alan4908]

12 hours ago, assouptro said:

Love the star colour! 
great job Alan 

thanks for sharing 

Bryan 

Thanks for the comment Bryan. 

Yes - lots of stars, so I spent a bit of time trying to bring out their various colours.  I always find this a bit of a challenge, particularly when you have blue stars embedded in red nebulosity.

Alan