Iris Nebula - where did the dark sky go?

[gorann]

Moon and clouds/snow makes me, like many others, dig into old data and apply the new XT processing tools (BlurXT2, StarXT, NoiseXT). These tools allow us to stretch more and suddenly there is dust everywhere. There has been some recent posts here revealing a lot of dust around the Pacman Nebula. This is 390 x 2 min (=13 h) from October 2020 of the area near the Iris.

RASA 8 with ASI2600MC. No filter.

Maybe we are finally finding the dark matter

Cheers, Göran

Here is my 2020 processing with plenty of dark sky:

Here is the new processing, and suddenly almost all of what I thought was dark sky is now very dusty, with just one or two openings, notably one in the bottom right quadrant.

Edited January 29 by gorann

[Roy Foreman]

That's an amazing difference, so much dust. From a purely pictorial point of view I prefer the original as it seems more colourful, whereas the reworked version is more monochromatic but technically more accurate. You are quite right when you say the dust has blocked out all the dark sky !

[JonHigh]

Brian May would be pleased to see all that dust! 
Really excellent reprocessing. I must look into getting PI and these plug ins at some point! 

Edited January 26 by JonHigh

[gorann]

2 hours ago, Roy Foreman said:

That's an amazing difference, so much dust. From a purely pictorial point of view I prefer the original as it seems more colourful, whereas the reworked version is more monochromatic but technically more accurate. You are quite right when you say the dust has blocked out all the dark sky !

Thanks Roy! I agree that the old version in many ways are more pleasing, but what do you do when the real world is so dusty.

[gorann]

2 hours ago, JonHigh said:

Brain May would be pleased to see all that dust! 
Really excellent reprocessing. I must look into getting PI and these plug ins at some point! 

Thanks a lot Jon! Yes, but Brian, at least in his thesis,  is into the dust we have in our solar system. This dust is far away. I wonder if the stars we see in the image is on our side of the dust or if some manage to shine through.

Edited January 26 by gorann

[gorann]

1 minute ago, gorann said:

Thanks a lot Jon! Yes, but Brian, at least in his thesis,  is into the dust we have in our solar system. This dust is far away. I wonder if the stars we see in the image are on our side of the dust or if some manage to shine through.

 

[symmetal]

That's very impressive Göran. 🤗

The result though is that the dust can end up being the focus of attention and the in reality, far brighter elements get subdued. The bright blue reflection nebula at the bottom in the original, has almost disappeared in the latest version. 

With these fast systems and modern processing, I think it's best to present two versions. A 'standard' one showing the brighter elements against a dark sky, and another showing the dust present.

It's surprising that DBE and GraXpert work as well as they do, considering there is no uniform background to work on.

Alan

[WolfieGlos]

No, this cant be right…I thought space was black…

That’s an incredible amount of dust, I kind of agree I prefer the original but the fact it’s there in your data, I say flaunt it.

I suppose it wouldn’t seem “as bad” if the FOV was a lot larger, a 12 panel mosaic across Auriga should do it Goran 😉

[gorann]

On 26/01/2024 at 20:13, symmetal said:

That's very impressive Göran. 🤗

The result though is that the dust can end up being the focus of attention and the in reality, far brighter elements get subdued. The bright blue reflection nebula at the bottom in the original, has almost disappeared in the latest version. 

With these fast systems and modern processing, I think it's best to present two versions. A 'standard' one showing the brighter elements against a dark sky, and another showing the dust present.

It's surprising that DBE and GraXpert work as well as they do, considering there is no uniform background to work on.

Alan

Thanks Alan! Yes, I agree, two versions may be warranted in the more dusty parts of our sky.

[gorann]

On 26/01/2024 at 21:32, WolfieGlos said:

No, this cant be right…I thought space was black…

That’s an incredible amount of dust, I kind of agree I prefer the original but the fact it’s there in your data, I say flaunt it.

I suppose it wouldn’t seem “as bad” if the FOV was a lot larger, a 12 panel mosaic across Auriga should do it Goran 😉

Thanks a lot! Auriga is of course a very dusty part of the sky, so maybe it is not a surprise that there really are not that much dark dustfree sky there.

[Mr Spock]

A very impressive image 👍

[gorann]

12 hours ago, Mr Spock said:

A very impressive image 👍

Thanks a lot Michael!