IC 1805, Heart Nebula | Takahashi ε-180ED

[mftoet]

This is a little more than 29 hours of integration time through the new Baader Planetarium CMOS optimised Ultra-Highspeed SII (4nm), Hα (3.5nm) and OIII (4nm) filters mapped in Hubble palette. Pre-processing was done in Astro Pixel Processor. Post-processing in Adobe Photoshop. For post-processing the stars where separated from the nebulas with Russell Croman's excellent new 'StarXTerminator' plug-in.

Exposure time: 29h10' (93x 300" SII, 121x 300" Hα, 136x 300" OIII) | Optics: Takahashi ε-180ED f/2.8 | Camera: ZWO ASI294MM Pro (B 2x2, G 120, T -15 °C) | Mount: Astro-Physics Mach1 GTO | Capturing and guiding: ZWO ASIair Pro (plan mode) + ZWO ASI120MM mini | Location: Zoetermeer, Netherlands (Bortle 8, SQM ~ 18.5 magn/arcsec²) | Date: 20, 22 September, 7, 8 & 9 October 2021

[red dwalf]

wow

 

[UKDiver]

1 minute ago, red dwalf said:

wow

 

Nothing to add to that.

[megrez]

Stunning!

[tooth_dr]

Lovely Maurice. I’m glad to see the filters are working well!  I bought a set for my ε-180ED and the Oiii didn’t seem to work at all so decided to switch to OSC on the Tak.  How are you finding the new star removal software?  Any tips?

[simmo39]

Yep another Wow from me.

[mftoet]

Thank you for all the wows! 
 

@tooth_dr: for this final image I saved two DDP stretched images to start with. One with a mild stretch (to preserve the stars) and one with a more intense stretch (for the nebulae). I subtracted the stars from the mildly stretched images and added them as a separate layer to more intensively stretched image. StarXTerminstor works like a charm for this procedure. 

[pietervdv]

Looks awesome Maurice! Great to see you are beating all that light pollution... 👍

Pieter 

[mrflib]

I had all sorts of problems with the StarXterminator. It'd remove the stars but leave large areas of background and fill it with a base colour - no noise, just smooth - stands out like a sore thumb.

I think the issue is halos around the stars are sometimes detected as stars.

On the other hand, your image looks bloody amazing and it's done a fab job for you!

 

Thanks for sharing.

[teoria_del_big_bang]

I have sat here looking at this great image to think of some other works to say about it and all I have is also WOW!

I do not think I have seen this target with so much detail and colour 🙂 

Steve

[scotty38]

That’s a truly wonderful image, well done!

[Sp@ce_d]

Oh very nice. That’s a pretty amazing result, like the colour range.

[Catanonia]

From Bortle 8, excellent   Yeah another wow from me and not just the image, but 29 hours.