Cone to IC443.

[ollypenrice]

Another one with Paul Kummer.

Paul drove the scope (based here) robotically from the UK and also did the pre-processing. Post processing is mine. 2 panels, 3 hrs per panel, RASA 8/ASI2600MC Pro/Avalon Linear.

Paul says the framing was good luck but the symmetrical wedge of Ha emission above IC443 447 works nicely to my eye.

Big one here: https://ollypenrice.smugmug.com/Other/Emission-Nebulae/i-fMwW3nr/A

Olly

 

Edited March 10, 2023 by ollypenrice
correction. IC447.

[tomato]

Great 2 panel image, vibrant colour, another fine vista from the RASA.

[Sunshine]

A beautiful image!

[gorann]

Beautiful image of a beautiful area Olly! I really like the dust not seen in most images of this area. Did you use a layer of Equalize to bring a bit extra dust out? Any filters used?

Edited March 9, 2023 by gorann

[Catanonia]

Looks really nice and a great reference for me, as I am doing the exact same region FOV on my Rasa8

Great nebulosity there, but I am feeling like the star colours (which are awesome in this region) are lacking. Especially the area between Cone and Dreyers where there is a massive yellow star cluster.

But I am nit picking as usual

[ollypenrice]

29 minutes ago, gorann said:

Beautiful image of a beautiful area Olly! I really like the dust not seen in most images of this area. Did you use a layer of Equalize to bring a bit extra dust out? Any filters used?

I didn't do any masked stretching this time. Instead, I did a series of stretches with the dark regions pinned so that I only stretched above them. I did give the starless a little LHE in Pixinsight as well. No filters.

15 minutes ago, Catanonia said:

Looks really nice and a great reference for me, as I am doing the exact same region FOV on my Rasa8

Great nebulosity there, but I am feeling like the star colours (which are awesome in this region) are lacking. Especially the area between Cone and Dreyers where there is a massive yellow star cluster.

But I am nit picking as usual

There's quite a lot of star colour when you look at the full. The problem is that, in holding them down so insistently, I left them with not much size in which to show their colour. I couldn't find a way around this choice between size and colour. The golden cluster you mention was a particular case in point so, not wanting to lose it altogether, I reapplied its stars over the small ones at a slightly harder stretch and with extra saturation so, relative to the rest, they are actually over-sized.

Too much star reduction, maybe?

Olly

Edited March 9, 2023 by ollypenrice

[Rodd]

Wow--Love the framing and processing.  You mention IC-443--is that close off the top border?  I kind of expected more details in and around the Fox Fur due to the aperture.  I am comparing to a 318 mm FL and pixel scale of 2.46"/pix.  Maybe its due to broadband vs narrowband.  That kind of makes sense.

[ollypenrice]

11 hours ago, Rodd said:

Wow--Love the framing and processing.  You mention IC-443--is that close off the top border?  I kind of expected more details in and around the Fox Fur due to the aperture.  I am comparing to a 318 mm FL and pixel scale of 2.46"/pix.  Maybe its due to broadband vs narrowband.  That kind of makes sense.

Yes, I think the local contrasts in emission gasses are much more visible in NB. Another thing, though, is that in this image there is a need to devote quite a lot of dynamic range at the dark end to the dusty features around IC443. We need to separate the dark, obscuring dust from the slightly brighter reflection dust around it. The entire Cone region is much brighter than this, meaning we can only make the darkest parts of the Cone's gasses brighter than the brightest dusty regions. In a crop, we could make them much darker and, therefore, more contrasty.

I've only started to think about this since using the RASA. In going so very deep on the faint stuff it makes me want to bring out those faint distinctions which, previously, would all have been compressed into background sky. The price paid for this is a reduction in remaining dynamic range once you've done it.  Still, a nice problem to have. 

Olly

[old_eyes]

Lovely image Olly. Smooth and full of detail.

It is massively rich starfield, and I can the see the difficult choices about how much to supress the stars and how much colour and flare to allow.

I have a similar FOV from the Tak Epsilon 180 at Roboscopes that I am currently working on. You image tells me I probably need to hold the stars back more, and treat the nebula a bit more gently.

As usual an inspiration. Thanks for sharing.

[Rodd]

3 hours ago, ollypenrice said:

Yes, I think the local contrasts in emission gasses are much more visible in NB. Another thing, though, is that in this image there is a need to devote quite a lot of dynamic range at the dark end to the dusty features around IC443. We need to separate the dark, obscuring dust from the slightly brighter reflection dust around it. The entire Cone region is much brighter than this, meaning we can only make the darkest parts of the Cone's gasses brighter than the brightest dusty regions. In a crop, we could make them much darker and, therefore, more contrasty.

I've only started to think about this since using the RASA. In going so very deep on the faint stuff it makes me want to bring out those faint distinctions which, previously, would all have been compressed into background sky. The price paid for this is a reduction in remaining dynamic range once you've done it.  Still, a nice problem to have. 

Olly

Ic443 is the jellyfish. Are you referring to that?  I think it’s the previous image on smugmug.  

[ollypenrice]

4 hours ago, Rodd said:

Ic443 is the jellyfish. Are you referring to that?  I think it’s the previous image on smugmug.  

Oops, my mistake, IC447. It's also vdb77 in this present image. Thanks for the heads up.

Olly

Edited March 10, 2023 by ollypenrice

[ollypenrice]

5 hours ago, old_eyes said:

Lovely image Olly. Smooth and full of detail.

It is massively rich starfield, and I can the see the difficult choices about how much to supress the stars and how much colour and flare to allow.

I have a similar FOV from the Tak Epsilon 180 at Roboscopes that I am currently working on. You image tells me I probably need to hold the stars back more, and treat the nebula a bit more gently.

As usual an inspiration. Thanks for sharing.

I had another look at star size and came up with this, which is also more magenta, true to the real colour, I think. Sometimes I think two versions is the only way!  

Olly

 

[old_eyes]

Olly,

I like the second version. The starfield feels much more real, and toning back the intensity of the nebulosity gives it a more ethereal look.

I think you are absolutely right. Instead of searching for the perfect rendition, we should be happy to produce a range of images, each of which highlights different features of the target. Highlighting the structure of the nebulosity, the ropes, threads, folds and twists often means a less 'realistic' image, but the structure is real, and pulling it into the foreground illustrates what is really going on in these astonishing objects.

[gorann]

19 hours ago, ollypenrice said:

I had another look at star size and came up with this, which is also more magenta, true to the real colour, I think. Sometimes I think two versions is the only way!  

Olly

 

That dust gives such a great 3D feeling to the image, and perhaps even more so in the second image. Some structures really look closer to us than others (and presumably they are).

Indeed, some googling tells me that the Cone is at 2700 ly and IC443 is at 2000 ly, which fits with the perspective of the image.

Edited March 11, 2023 by gorann

[MartinB]

I once watched a demonstration of facial beauty.  When many pictures of faces were blended together the resulting image was of a beautiful face.  So, I suggest you do a few versions Olly and blend them all together.  It is a magnificent image though, isn't it?  I love the reflection nebulosity towards the bottom of the image.  

[old_eyes]

I have now done the best I can with the data I collected 

The raw data is definitely different. For example, if I extract the Lum from the original calibrated and stacked image, the intensity from the background nebulosity is exactly the same as the intensity in the weaker parts of the hydrogen emission from the main nebula.

I have messed around with it various ways and I always end up with a weak emission area at the bottom of the main nebula triangle and lots of signal from the dust and gas at the bottom of the image. I wonder which stars are pumping the hydrogen emission of the main nebula and whether the gas an dust at the bottom of the image are part of the same structure, or separate and at different distances.

Anyway it was fun to try and achieve a similar image, even if I failed in the end.

 

[GalaxyGael]

It's one of those regions with so much going on, and with a lot of beautiful stars, density, color and clustering/spreading, that you can go one of two emphasis routes. 

That's a lovely version though, with sweeping clouds od H alpha and dust nodules coming to the fore. With OSC and no filter boosting of H alpha, say, there is the option of the reds, browns and other tones to come through. I personally prefer the stars with nebula as best supporting actor.

This is a WIP, only 4 hrs at 300 mm fl, f/5 again with OSC 2600mc. It's gone behind the houses and needs at least 10 hrs more to give the chance to stretch the background nebulosity some more to show the features - the light grey around the blue of Dreyer's, the colour within the lower knots under Dreyer's, all the dust etc and the red, magentas and blues around the cone while keeping them behind the colorful stars - well that was the plan at the start. 😊

Mind you, it might be worth playing with the processing again to see how it changes personality.

[900SL]

Nice composition and image Ollie

Zooming in on the smugmug image makes me realise how far I still have to go in acquisition and processing

[ollypenrice]

1 hour ago, GalaxyGael said:

It's one of those regions with so much going on, and with a lot of beautiful stars, density, color and clustering/spreading, that you can go one of two emphasis routes. 

That's a lovely version though, with sweeping clouds od H alpha and dust nodules coming to the fore. With OSC and no filter boosting of H alpha, say, there is the option of the reds, browns and other tones to come through. I personally prefer the stars with nebula as best supporting actor.

This is a WIP, only 4 hrs at 300 mm fl, f/5 again with OSC 2600mc. It's gone behind the houses and needs at least 10 hrs more to give the chance to stretch the background nebulosity some more to show the features - the light grey around the blue of Dreyer's, the colour within the lower knots under Dreyer's, all the dust etc and the red, magentas and blues around the cone while keeping them behind the colorful stars - well that was the plan at the start. 😊

Mind you, it might be worth playing with the processing again to see how it changes personality.

That's an absolutely beautiful image and I think you've realized your intentions superbly. As we seem to be concluding, we cannot 'have your stars and not have them,' and a compromise in star emphasis is not as good a solution as is having two renditions. I think I'll have a go at processing without SXT and see what I get.

Following my conversation with @old_eyes I tried a very different approach with my data since I didn't feel the original got all that it could out of the faint background. Knowing that I could still de-star it, I tried the Ha stretch I use for Ha destined for blending with red. It's very aggressive:

What it does do, of course, is give an extereme stretch and extreme contrasts at the darker end of the image, at the cost of large stars. (Not a problem with a 3nm Ha filter or with SXT available). I then de-starred this and found that I had, indeed, found more dusty activity near IC447 and mild advantages in one or two other places. In general, though, the result was remarkably similar to the first. As a long term believer in blending different renditions, as per Martin B's suggestions) I combined the two and came up with this:

https://www.astrobin.com/viugy5/B/

As old-eyes said, there really must be significant differences between his data and ours, despite the similarity in equipment and sky quality.

Olly

Edited March 13, 2023 by ollypenrice
Typo

[old_eyes]

3 hours ago, ollypenrice said:

In general, though, the result was remarkably similar to the first. As a long term believer in blending different renditions, as per Martin B's suggestions) I combined the two and came up with this:

https://www.astrobin.com/viugy5/B/

But what an image though. It keeps getting better and better!