IC 5146 - Cocoon Nebula in LRGB (8 hrs)

[Xiga]

Shot over 4 nights in Aug & Sep, 3 nights for the Lum and 1 night for the RGB, all with pretty much no moon from Bortle 5/6 skies.

I've been processing this on and off for the best part of a week and a half now, as and when i get a chance late at night. For whatever reason, I was able to get to 90% of the finished image pretty quickly, but i then seemed to struggle when it came to settling on the final brightness, saturation, and overall level of star reduction for image presentation. I was initially worried that i wouldn't have enough RGB data to bring out the colour. but as it happened i had to actually dial down the colour in the end, which really surprised me. I have to say, the new tools for star removal (StarXTerminator) and noise reduction (NoiseXTerminator) really are amazing, and allowed me to push the data further than i would have been able to before.  Details below:

L - 164 x 120s (5 hr 28mins). Astronomik-L3

R,G,B - 19/18/16 x 180s (2 hrs 39mins). SVBony filters

Qhy268m. Mode 3 (Extended Full Well). Gain 16, Offset 25. -5C. 

HEQ5-Pro\SW 80ed\OAG & 290mm

AstroPixelProcessor used for stacking and light pollution removal, Siril used for PhotometricColourCalibration, and Photoshop used for everything else. 

The sheer number of stars in the field was overwhelming at first, so i had to use starless processing to help tame them and boost the dust. It's amazing just how much dust is there, hiding in the background, and only visible once you get the stars out of the way. 

Up to now i've never bothered even trying to shoot anything dusty, so i'll definitely be trying more now in future. In fact, i managed to also grab about 4 hrs of Lum on B150 (the Sea Horse Nebula) in the last couple of weeks, so fingers crossed i can get some RGB on it in the next few weeks otherwise i'll have to put it on hold until next Autumn. 

Thanks for looking guys, and clear skies! 🙂 

Edited October 6, 2022 by Xiga

[simmo39]

That looks real good, almost 3D.

[Xiga]

15 hours ago, simmo39 said:

That looks real good, almost 3D.

Thanks simmo! 🙂 

[tooth_dr]

Absolutely stunning image, puts the cocoon in a whole different perspective.
Also I didn’t realise how much dust there was!!

There is quite a bit of blue reflection around the cocoon which is nice. Yes this is a really fine image 👌🏻

[Xiga]

On 06/10/2022 at 22:34, tooth_dr said:

Absolutely stunning image, puts the cocoon in a whole different perspective.
Also I didn’t realise how much dust there was!!

There is quite a bit of blue reflection around the cocoon which is nice. Yes this is a really fine image 👌🏻

Thanks Adam. 🙂  

For a long time, while i was processing it, i wasn't really happy with how it looked. Then when i removed the stars and boosted the starless image, it suddenly came to life. 

I thought it would be fun to show a quick animation. Here is a gif which starts from the image right after doing the LRGB combination, and ending at the final image. No intermediary processing steps, just a smooth transition between the two. Note, i had to downsize it by 50% in order to keep the file size down. Ignore the slight posterisation effect, this is just a side-effect of converting the image into a gif. 

Edited October 12, 2022 by Xiga

[mackiedlm]

Stunning image, we rarely see the detail of the dust tail like this.

Edited October 11, 2022 by mackiedlm

[geeklee]

5 hours ago, Xiga said:

I though it would be fun to show a quick animation.

Really cool Ciarán.  The ability to work on a starless image gives so many options.  The original combination was already really good and showed off some dust but the final image is something so different with so much more showing through.

[tooth_dr]

@Xiga thats a great animation, just shows you whats possible with the star removal.  I've an image very like the first one and would never ever have thought to remove the stars and find just like that.

[powerlord]

On 06/10/2022 at 03:48, Xiga said:

Shot over 4 nights in Aug & Sep, 3 nights for the Lum and 1 night for the RGB, all with pretty much no moon from Bortle 5/6 skies.

I've been processing this on and off for the best part of a week and a half now, as and when i get a chance late at night. For whatever reason, I was able to get to 90% of the finished image pretty quickly, but i then seemed to struggle when it came to settling on the final brightness, saturation, and overall level of star reduction for image presentation. I was initially worried that i wouldn't have enough RGB data to bring out the colour. but as it happened i had to actually dial down the colour in the end, which really surprised me. I have to say, the new tools for star removal (StarXTerminator) and noise reduction (NoiseXTerminator) really are amazing, and allowed me to push the data further than i would have been able to before.  Details below:

L - 164 x 120s (5 hr 28mins). Astronomik-L3

R,G,B - 19/18/16 x 180s (2 hrs 39mins). SVBony filters

Qhy268m. Mode 3 (Extended Full Well). Gain 16, Offset 25. -5C. 

HEQ5-Pro\SW 80ed\OAG & 290mm

AstroPixelProcessor used for stacking and light pollution removal, Siril used for PhotometricColourCalibration, and Photoshop used for everything else. 

The sheer number of stars in the field was overwhelming at first, so i had to use starless processing to help tame them and boost the dust. It's amazing just how much dust is there, hiding in the background, and only visible once you get the stars out of the way. 

Up to now i've never bothered even trying to shoot anything dusty, so i'll definitely be trying more now in future. In fact, i managed to also grab about 4 hrs of Lum on B150 (the Sea Horse Nebula) in the last couple of weeks, so fingers crossed i can get some RGB on it in the next few weeks otherwise i'll have to put it on hold until next Autumn. 

Thanks for looking guys, and clear skies! 🙂 

very nice. I've only been doing this 2 years now, and about 6 months ago I was looking at stuff like this thinking - that's just mad I'll never manage to do that. Now I've started down the dust rabbit hole too - it is amazing how dusty it is out there - I've done shark a few times, and around Iris, etc - thanks to new cameras, etc it's really making stuff easier and pics like this add a whole new dimension to nebulas. top work fella!

[ollypenrice]

Stunning.

Just occasionally we see an imager bring something radically new to a target and that's what you've done here. This one was itching for the de-starring technique and you've bagged it beautifully.  Your animation shows an image we've seen a hundred times before and then, wham, something we haven't.

Standing ovation.

Olly

[Xiga]

On 11/10/2022 at 08:59, mackiedlm said:

Stunning image, we rarely see the detail of the dust tail like this.

thanks mackie. it came as a nice surprise to me too! 

On 11/10/2022 at 09:30, geeklee said:

Really cool Ciarán.  The ability to work on a starless image gives so many options.  The original combination was already really good and showed off some dust but the final image is something so different with so much more showing through.

cheers Lee. I've used this method before in the past, but i was never totally satisfied with it to tell you the truth due to the limitations of the software available at the time. It's only now with the much improved StarXT (or Starnet++V2) but especially NoiseXT that i've now found it possible to push the data far enough without ruining the image

On 11/10/2022 at 09:55, tooth_dr said:

@Xiga thats a great animation, just shows you whats possible with the star removal.  I've an image very like the first one and would never ever have thought to remove the stars and find just like that.

thanks Adam 👍 I think for any image containing dust (no matter how much) using a starless image to help boost it is always worth a go now. it might not work on every image, but it's always worth a shot, especially now we have software that's able to give us clean starless images and an effective way to deal with the noise

4 hours ago, powerlord said:

very nice. I've only been doing this 2 years now, and about 6 months ago I was looking at stuff like this thinking - that's just mad I'll never manage to do that. Now I've started down the dust rabbit hole too - it is amazing how dusty it is out there - I've done shark a few times, and around Iris, etc - thanks to new cameras, etc it's really making stuff easier and pics like this add a whole new dimension to nebulas. top work fella!

thanks mate! you're absolutely right about camera technology, it really has come on a lot in recent years. I'm super hapy with how the 268m performs, it definitely has made processing more fun for me in my Bortle 5-6ish skies. 

3 hours ago, ollypenrice said:

Stunning.

Just occasionally we see an imager bring something radically new to a target and that's what you've done here. This one was itching for the de-starring technique and you've bagged it beautifully.  Your animation shows an image we've seen a hundred times before and then, wham, something we haven't.

Standing ovation.

Olly

Thanks Olly, that means a lot! 🙏

By the end, i'd been staring at the image for so long i'd forgotten just how much the addition of the starless processing had transformed it. It was only when i looked back that it hit me, and that's when i had the idea of showing it as an animation. 

[GalaxyGael]

I missed this Ciaran, but the star reduction really does help in this one, very nice.

for APP, one good tip to bring out any faint background color before getting to your star rich first version is to reduce the Sat. Th. (saturation threshold) slider to about 5% rather than 155 default. I find that in deep broadband images with good integration it brings up the background nebulosity some. It does this without affecting highlights. you might have some reds in there maybe.

 

EDIT, oops just re-read that you were LRGB, not OSC, so this APP technique is only useful if you combined in APP itself.

Edited January 10, 2023 by GalaxyGael
added comment after properly reading OP post