24 Hours at the Bubble Nebula

[AMcD]

I am finding that one of the great advantages of instituting remote control / automation is that the observatory can open and close several times a night to catch periods of clear skies between the clouds, meaning I can increase significantly the time I can spend on a target over fewer nights.  

This is my image of the Bubble Nebula NGC 7635 comprising 24.3hrs of 300 sec subframes taken using a QHY8 OSC with an Optolong L-Extreme filter on a TS152 achromatic refractor mounted on a Losmandy G11.  Integrations acquired using SGPro guided with PHD2 under Bortle 5 skies.  Stacked with flat frames in DSS (the QHY8 does not tend to require darks).  Processing in PS.  The 32 bit DSS tiff file was cropped, rotated, a medium/medium Gradient Exterminator applied, adjusted in levels and converted to a 16 bit tiff file in 'Gamma and Exposure'.   Four 'Curves' stretches were then applied to the 16 bit tiff file, followed each time by adjustment of the black point in 'Levels'.  Noel Carboni's Astronomy Actions for PS was then used ('Enhance DSO and Reduce Stars' / 'Local Contrast Enhancement' / 'Reduce Stars /).  'Select and Mask' was used to sharpen selected edges.  Final tweaks in PS with 'Colour Balance'. 'Hue and Saturation' and 'Brightness and Contrast'.  Tiff and PNG versions below:

Bubble_DSS_LFStack_24hrs_SGL.tif

[Ouroboros]

Lovely magical bubble.  Good to read how it was done too. 

[Paul M]

That's nice!

You forgot to mention the nova that won't die, sitting pretty and orange, middle bottom!

Also I see you picked out the core and brighter lobes of  PN KjPn 8, a massive and faint planetary that is embedded in the outer reaches of the H2 region  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KjPn_8. Something I only heard of recently after annotation one of my own images.

[Sp@ce_d]

Nice one. You’ve been lucky with getting the data even with an automated Obsy. I reckon I’ve only had 2 nights this season so far where the data is worth keeping. The cloudwatcher might’ve thought it was clear but the seeing & amount of moisture in the air has been awful. Then again it’s more than I’ve had from another setup I’ve had waiting for me to use under a telegizmo! You can’t beat an Obsy. That’s a nice result you’ve got there.

[AMcD]

3 minutes ago, Paul M said:

That's nice!

You forgot to mention the nova that won't die, sitting pretty and orange, middle bottom!

Also I see you picked out the core and brighter lobes of  PN KjPn 8, a massive and faint planetary that is embedded in the outer reaches of the H2 region  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KjPn_8. Something I only heard of recently after annotation one of my own images.

So I did!  Now that I have increased my integrations, I am clearly going to have to look more carefully at what is caught by the camera 😀  Many thanks for pointing that out.

[AMcD]

1 minute ago, Sp@ce_d said:

Nice one. You’ve been lucky with getting the data even with an automated Obsy. I reckon I’ve only had 2 nights this season so far where the data is worth keeping. The cloudwatcher might’ve thought it was clear but the seeing & amount of moisture in the air has been awful. Then again it’s more than I’ve had from another setup I’ve had waiting for me to use under a telegizmo! You can’t beat an Obsy. That’s a nice result you’ve got there.

Many thanks.  The seeing has indeed been very variable over the nights I have been gathering data for this.  In the circumstances, the data for this image comprises 75% of the nearly 33 hours I took in total.  Some of the data I left out was very poor indeed due to high cloud etc.

[teoria_del_big_bang]

Great image, some lovely detail 🙂 

Steve

[teoria_del_big_bang]

2 hours ago, AMcD said:

I am finding that one of the great advantages of instituting remote control / automation is that the observatory can open and close several times a night to catch periods of clear skies between the clouds, meaning I can increase significantly the time I can spend on a target over fewer nights.

I think this is what we all may need to do if we have another year like this year in UK.
it really is the way to go if you can manage it 🙂

Steve

[AMcD]

2 hours ago, teoria_del_big_bang said:

I think this is what we all may need to do if we have another year like this year in UK.
it really is the way to go if you can manage it 🙂

Steve

I cannot remember the last time we had a clear night from dusk until dawn, but we seem to have plenty of nights with an hour or two of clear skies here and there, interspersed with clouds and showers.   In those circumstances, this is the only way I can get some sleep! 😄

[teoria_del_big_bang]

1 minute ago, AMcD said:

cannot remember the last time we had a clear night from dusk until dawn, but we seem to have plenty of nights with an hour or two of clear skies here and there, interspersed with clouds and showers.   In those circumstances, this is the only way I can get some sleep! 

Yup, that's how it has been. I have to bring my gear out of garage onto the patio and in previous years had several nights of going to bed leaving it imaging till the darkness goes and then park and just put it away in the morning, or on odd occasions been confident enough to cover it and go the following night. But this year it's like you say an hour or two  in and amongst some clouds here and there and more often than not I have ended up bringing it all in around midnight as it was gull cloud cover.

Lest hope this is not a trend for the coming years, but for sure I need to look at a more permanent setup, problem is we plan to move in next couple of years so don't really want to be moving an obsy as well so been waiting until after the move.

Steve