LDN1251 Anglerfish Nebula

[carastro]

Been wanting to get this target for some time, but no chance at home and needed to get to a dark location.    Went to a Campsite over the weekend in East Sussex Bortle 4 (boy it was bitterly cold and windy on Thursday, but thankfully the wind died down by Friday evening, but it made setting up very difficult).  Was joined by Chris R and Tom Collicott both of this forum.    

Lum 47 x 600  7 hours 50mins
RGB 9 x 300 binned x 2 each total 2h 15mins 
Atik460EX and SWED80 
EFW Baader LRGB
Taken over 2 nights 

Total imaging time 10hours 5mins.   

 

Edited April 4, 2022 by carastro

[DaveS]

Ooh, that's lovely Carole, well worth the trip I'd say.

[carastro]

Thanks Dave.

Carole 

[Toltec]

The extra luminance subs really helped pull out the detail in the dark sections. Love the star colours. 

[Sunshine]

A beautiful image!

[carastro]

Thanks Toltec and Sunshine.

Quote

The extra luminance subs really helped pull out the detail in the dark sections. Love the star colours. 

Absolutely, I did a camp process after only one night, and the dark nebula was fairly noisy, those extra 4 hours made a lot of difference. 

Carole 

[Tommohawk]

Fabulous result Carole, really nicely processed with great colours! You make the processing seem so easy!

I'm having fun and games with my Dark Shark which I acquired same night, mostly due to the huge numbers of subs I have. Beginning to wonder if CMOS is the way to go after all!

Yes - it was an absolutely freezing couple of nights but great fun all the same. I think my camera was running at -20 without the cooler!

I'll post my effort when I finally figure out how best to do it!

[m.tweedy]

Love the image. You manage to get the star colours much better than me from the same camera

 

[carastro]

Hi m tweedy.  Thanks.  I select the stars and increase the colour early on in the processing before the stretching washes them out.  
 

Carole

[callisto]

Great image 👌

 

Mark.

[carastro]

Thanks Callisto

[ollypenrice]

Oh, that's an interesting one. It seems to have got under my radar so you've inspired me, Carole. You've made a good job of it, too. (It's quite topical because I've been re-processing the Shark today. We could end up with quite an aquarium!)

Olly

[carastro]

 

@ollypenrice   Hi Olly, lol.   Yes I did a widefield of it a while ago with the Shark and called it the Fish Nebulae.  

Thanks for your nice comments.  But seriously, your name has been mentioned quite a lot lately amongst my Astro chums, including Tommohawk above who was at the weekend astro camp. with me,  because of the "Exploiting the Equalise funtion" that you showed me and I subsequnetly did a video tutorial of.  It was absolutely needed in this image to bring out the faint dust and I have been showing a few friends the technique all of whom were amazed at the results it gave.

So I do have you to thank for some of this result.

Carole 

Edited April 6, 2022 by carastro

[ollypenrice]

10 hours ago, carastro said:

 

@ollypenrice   Hi Olly, lol.   Yes I did a widefield of it a while ago with the Shark and called it the Fish Nebulae.  

Thanks for your nice comments.  But seriously, your name has been mentioned quite a lot lately amongst my Astro chums, including Tommohawk above who was at the weekend astro camp. with me,  because of the "Exploiting the Equalise funtion" that you showed me and I subsequnetly did a video tutorial of.  It was absolutely needed in this image to bring out the faint dust and I have been showing a few friends the technique all of whom were amazed at the results it gave.

So I do have you to thank for some of this result.

Carole 

Funny you should say that because that's exactly what I was doing when re-processing my Shark and it did work well. I tend to under-process the dusty stuff and hadn't used the 'equalized copy as layer mask' method on the original. I'm preparing copies of my images for print and find that they need more separation between faint stuff and background in print than they need on the screen. That's why I tried the equalize trick and I found I liked it for screen viewing as well. I think the method is essentially a form of 'inverse layer masking' but it is far quicker and less complicated.

Olly

Edited April 7, 2022 by ollypenrice
Typo

[m.tweedy]

On 05/04/2022 at 09:09, carastro said:

Hi m tweedy.  Thanks.  I select the stars and increase the colour early on in the processing before the stretching washes them out.  
 

Carole

Thank you. I will try that. Apologies I Missed the reply

[carastro]

Hmmm, my original image seems to have disappeared in the first post. 

But I decided to have another go at processing it  since I wasn't happy with some of the star reduction artifacts and the colour.   Also I wasn't happy with how I had processed the bright star on the "fish's head".  Then seeing Olly's and Goran's FANTASTIC fantastic renditions gave me the shove, (oh to have their dark skies though) plus after discussion on my Whatsapp Group, Geof Lewis introduced me to Images Plus processing software and I certainly think the star reduction on that seems to work better than what I have been doing. 

This is a link to my original image on Astrobin.

https://www.astrobin.com/64u89h/G/#r0

This is my new process:

 

[Tommohawk]

Hi Carole - well TBH I thought your original was excellent, but I agree the star shapes are nicer in the new version.

I've yet to post my Dark Shark effort from that chilly weekend! I need to have another go at it ..... 

[carastro]

Thanks Tom 

[Greymouser]

Superb, inspiring even. ( I can almost feel a hole opening before me as I consider astrophotography as a possible future... )

I would say your second one is better, even suitable for my desktop wallpaper, maybe, if you don't mind? 

 

[carastro]

Thanks Greymouser. Flattered if you use it as your screen saver. 
Also that it has inspired you to get into imaging  

Carole

Edited June 11, 2022 by carastro

[Swoop1]

I can't see the image Carole?

Must be a problem my end.

[teoria_del_big_bang]

5 minutes ago, Swoop1 said:

I can't see the image Carole?

Must be a problem my end.

Its a bit odd but if you click on the png icon you get this:-

But then if you click on the Right arrow as in ">" you see the image:-

But better still scroll down to the 16th post and Carole has reprosessed it and reposted the image.

Steve

[Swoop1]

2 hours ago, teoria_del_big_bang said:

Its a bit odd but if you click on the png icon you get this:-

But then if you click on the Right arrow as in ">" you see the image:-

But better still scroll down to the 16th post and Carole has reprosessed it and reposted the image.

Steve

Thanks Steve, found it now!

[carastro]

Quote

I can't see the image Carole?

Must be a problem my end.

The original has disappeared for me too.  No idea what happened.   Unless it could be because I deleted it in astrobin which is hosting the images.  

Glad you can see the reprocess.

Carole