Sh2-112 and IC1396 (part of) from last night 19/20-08-2023

[fwm891]

For me it was the 2nd all nighter I've had this month and really enjoyed being outside with the kit under the stars. Almost a non starter as I thought clouds had set in early on. Fifteen minutes later after an early coffee break and a biscuit and gaps had begun to apear so thoughts of breaking down evaporated and the night progressed from there.

I'm trying to get to grips with N.I.N.A. at present and just manually connecting the kit I need: camera, mount, focuser and PHD2. I have set-up a profile for the kit but whether it's me not used to NINA yet but I can start PHD2 from NINA but I have to open PHD2 to make changes to exposures with all it's other complexities it seems strange that I can't make simple changes from within NINA as I can with the main camera? (gripe over).

Anyway the images I've processed ths morning:

Sh2-112. 10x 300s sub frames

IC1396. 4x 300s sub frames

The kit was the same for both: Camera - ASI2600MC DUO Gain 101 for main sensor, gain 75 for guide sensor. Filter, Askar 6nm Ha/OIII. Mount, iOptron CEM60 (non EC) and Focuser (an Italian job? senso2?). Scope, Orion Optics (UK) VX10.

Processing for both was similar using PixInsight 1.8.9-1 (I updated to 1.8.9-2 but it removed all the RC-Astro stuff and other routines so I reverted back to 1.8.9-1 which retrieved them all!).

I haven't shot any flat or bias frames with the new camera yet so no calibration was done to the above sub frames. Simply: Debayer (RGGB/VNG/combined colour), Star Alignment and Image Integration to get an image stack. Then Histogram Transformation, ABE and SCNR to clean up the image stacks.

IC1396. At this point I used RC Astro's StarEXterminator to give me a Star and the background nebulosity as separate images. The Star only image was saved and I then split the channels for the background image and used the red channel as a mask and 'played' with Curve Transformation and Saturation while flicking between highlight and background areas of the image until I felt happy with the image. The Star only image was then given a small increase in Saturation before being recombined with the background image with PixelMath.

Sh2-112 Followed the same process path as IC1396 with the exception that before recombining the two parts I run BlurEXterminator on the Star only image as I felt the stars were too dominant when I first tried combining them.

Both Sh2-112 and IC1396 were then saved and resized as needed.

Hope you like.

 

Edited August 20, 2023 by fwm891