M27 dumbbell nebula

[powerlord]

Taken over the last week - 3 sessions with my 300pds, asi2600 and EQ6r with L-ultimate filter (3nm Ha/Oiii)

processed in siril and affinity photo as usual in the natural palette. Each year I have a go at this target. I've got more outer shells this time than I've ever had before.

 

[Sunshine]

Wow, a beautiful image! amazing work.

[ONIKKINEN]

That is a great image. Love how it looks like a clearly dynamic 3-dimensional object. Kind of like a still frame of an explosion in progress, which it basically is.

[glafnazur]

That's a fantastic image, it just shows what can be done at this time of year without truly dark skies.

[Roy Foreman]

Nice capture  - those outer shells can be very elusive !

[Graeme]

18 hours ago, powerlord said:

 .... I've got more outer shells this time than I've ever had before. 

 

That's an excellent image. You've got more outer shells than I've ever seen before! Is that the capturing power of the ASI2600?

Graeme

 

 

[powerlord]

I think the L-ultimate helps with it's 3nm bands. And of course noiseX helps there days in being able to use even that very faint data and make it presentable. And the bit depth of the asi2600 let me take 300 sec subs without blowing out the core.

I also took a hybrid approach to integration - basically I went through the subs and only deleted the truly rubbish ones. If there was just minor doubling of stars or smear but the nebulosity looked ok (since its much dimmer it would need to be off for a long time to matter), I kept them.

I then did 2 integrations - one chosing only the very best subs, and one from everything.

I could then use the best subs for the stars and the core, while using the everything integration to get as much of the faint detail as possible (after removing the rubbish stars and core)

I used luminosity masks in affinity photo to then blend in the best of each. So the core 'best' stack is about 5 hours of subs, whereas the outer shells are from the 'everything' stack of about 10 hours of subs.

And obviously using the Iraqi supergun 300pds helps suck as many of those photons in as possible 🙂

stu