A Barely There Squid

[tomato]

 

After being highly impressed with @clarkpm4242's image posted earlier, and faced with the current weather forecast of having no prospect of being able to add any more integration time to my frankly ridiculous existing 72 mins on this subject, I thought I would process it anyway and post it as a comparison, given that it was captured with the same set up. To my amazement, the Squid is just discernible, although I have pushed the processing in favour of the OIII channel.

On the subject of OSC vs mono, on the same rig I have a Samyang 135 F2 lens coupled to a KAF 8300 mono CCD. In the same session I got an hour of Ha and just 10 mins of OIII before the clouds rolled in. Needless to say there is no trace of the Squid in that image. Not a fair comparison instrument wise I know, but first strike to the OSC  in at least capturing something of this ghostly cephalopod.

[Sunshine]

its clearly there! great image!

[MickD]

To add another comparison, this is 3 hours (in 15 min subs), also with a KAF 8300 (Atik 383) and a Samyang 135 (cropped to just show the nebula). I had to remove the stars before I could see anything.

Not sure If I am going to continue........

Mick

[tomato]

Hmm, looks like the RASA/268c will stay in front of the SY135/8300 no matter how many hours I manage to collect…

Edited November 6, 2021 by tomato
Typo corrected

[david_taurus83]

The 268 has its highest QE peak around the Oiii band anyway so will register way more photons than the KAF. Around 90+% v 55%.

[MartinB]

In many ways this is a better rendition that those images (including mine) which show a more pronounced squid, since it shows very nicely how faint it is.  

[Craney]

I imaged with my Samyang 135 (F2) on an Atik 414ex  at Oiii  for 4 hours  and did not get a tentacle,  so this is great.