M27 - experiment combining APP and Pixinsight

[whitfieldp]

HIya all

I got about 8.5hrs of data on the M27 a week or so ago in both broadband and narrow band so some experimenting beckoned!

LRGB and a combined LRGB-HSO image came out of Astropixel Processor. The background of the latter could do with tweaking a touch but not too bad.

I've used APP for a some time but I bit the bullet and bought Pixinsight - mainly for the star masks initially. To damp down the stars and bring out the details in the nebula I set out to produce a SHO nebula with RGB starfield. Starnet was used to separate each and processed separately before recombining them using pixelmath. I dropped the lum data entirely and might have damped down the stars a little too much. I might do another version where they are a bit more pronounced. Methinks I'll be using a combination the APP and Pixinsight for a while yet while I figure out Pixinsight. I might never drop APP entirely as it does such a good job with stacking but who knows?

The data were collected over 4 nights of variable seeing. All filters were binned 1x1 using a QHY9 mono camera, Explore Scientific CF102 triplet (pixel scale = 1.56 arcseconds per pixel) and a Darkframe Stellardrive-tuned Skywatcher AZEQ5. Broadband subs were 180s and narrowband subs 600s. The only dropped subs were down to clouds/satellite trails with guiding RMS in the range of 0.5-0.75 arcseconds for what is a challenging long, 11kg payload on a AZEQ5 (I'm very good at balancing!). With guiding way lower than the image pixel scale the HFR in the subs was very consistent. 

CS

Pam

[whitfieldp]

OK - now got the background level where I want it in the composite image without clipping. A bit of work with Topaz Labs Detail sharpened up the nebula detail as well 😃