Pacman Nebula

[vineyard]

Hello,

Here's my first go at the Pacman.  Evoguide50 (w the flattener) w a UHC-S filter in place.  ASI178MM-cool.  7h28 of 60s lights (taken on 21 & 22 Nov, so 97% & 92% moon).  Calibrated.  APP then PI.  Downsampled for posting.

Cheers,

Vin

 

[MartinB]

Well done, that's quite a challenge with a big old moon around.  The filter has done a good job.  Did you have a stonking gradient to deal with?

[vineyard]

Thanks @MartinB - yes I was quite pleased w how well that filter did.  An L-enhance would have been tighter but the UHC-S didn't let itself down.  Was a bit lucky with the moon in that was able to get a some data before the moon rose high enough to come over neighbouring buildings.  I just let ABE & then HT do the background cleaning up work tbh 😂  Before ABE yes there was a wash of background signal.

I like your Chroma 5nm narrow image.  V nice Bok tendrils and tight stars as well.  I'm not sure whether the [brighter] stars in my image are bloated or not.  Not enough of a virtuoso on CMOS cameras but part of me is wondering whether a lower gain would have left a larger full-well to play with (even for 60s exposures) - but then introduced higher read noise too.  Or maybe that's just the way the brighter stars would always come out?🤷🏾‍♂️

[MartinB]

38 minutes ago, vineyard said:

 I'm not sure whether the [brighter] stars in my image are bloated or not.  Not enough of a virtuoso on CMOS cameras but part of me is wondering whether a lower gain would have left a larger full-well to play with (even for 60s exposures) - but then introduced higher read noise too.  Or maybe that's just the way the brighter stars would always come out?🤷🏾‍♂️

I don't think your stars are bloated Vin.  My stars are quite small because I used a photoshop/PI plug in called StarXterminator (similar to Starnet++ but better although not free) to make the stars disappear.  You can do this before the end of a full stretch, fully process the starless image then add back the stars that were taken out.  You can then tweak the stars to suit.  I think using zero gain is handy for maximising star colour when RGB imaging since the full well depth really comes into play.  Using 60 second exposures I think  you are better using a higher gain to minimise read noise.

[vineyard]

Thanks @MartinB - yes I want to try Starnet but for some reason it doesn't instal on my laptop (its an old machine so it maybe processor related).  I'll give StarXterminator a go if that works on my machine (I doubt it will since it seems to need 10.15 or later as the MacOS, and I'm still on 10.13 (my machine can't handle the later OS...can't handle that latest PI versions either, so I guess an upgrade will be needed at some stage)).

That's reassuring on the bloat & the gain - cheers!