M78 - First Light From New Dual Setup

[The Lazy Astronomer]

In November last year, I finally pulled the trigger and got myself a second scope and camera for speeding up data acquisition. After a bit of faff getting everything set up, I was able to take advantage of a couple of good nights in December and grab a solid 20hrs on M78, which felt very satisfying. 

Since then, I've spent most of January finding as many ways as possible to totally destroy the data in PI (who'd have thought faint dust and dark nebula would be difficult! 🤪). I have now settled on something I'm happy which I think respects the data, but open to any feedback or critique.

Portrait:

Landscape:

Details:

Approx. 9hrs L, Esprit 100, 294MM

Approx. 7.5hrs RGB, 61 EDPHIII, 533MC

Approx. 2hrs Ha, Esprit 100, 294MM

[WolfieGlos]

55 minutes ago, The Lazy Astronomer said:

(who'd have thought faint dust and dark nebula would be difficult! 🤪)

ME! This one looks familiar, haha.

Great image, nice detail in the core and star colours too.

[geeklee]

Superb result! Was is difficult working with the different data sets and bringing them together?  Looks like RGB from the lower FL/resolution rig and the L and Ha from the higher FL/resolution one?

1 hour ago, The Lazy Astronomer said:

which felt very satisfying. 

That must have felt good

Edited February 2 by geeklee

[The Lazy Astronomer]

4 hours ago, WolfieGlos said:

ME! This one looks familiar, haha.

Great image, nice detail in the core and star colours too.

Haha yeah, I did consider posting it upside down to create some distinction from yours, and I have to admit I did use your image and the feedback you got on it as a reference, particularly your blues. 

[The Lazy Astronomer]

4 hours ago, geeklee said:

Superb result! Was is difficult working with the different data sets and bringing them together?  Looks like RGB from the lower FL/resolution rig and the L and Ha from the higher FL/resolution one?

That must have felt good

Thanks! Yeah the smaller scope collected the colour, the L and Ha are from the bigger one. It wasn't difficult at all to work with them; no different to doing a normal LRGB image all from a mono cam. Actually slightly easier, because I only had to stack 2 sets instead of 4. The RGB data is rescaled, aligned, and cropped to match the L data, all handled by PI's StarAlignment without issue.

The biggest difficulty in combining the data was trying to keep the Ha largely out of the dust and restrict it to Barnard's Loop.

An unexpected advantage was the wider FOV from the little Sharpstar allowed me to use the multiscale gradient removal technique on the Esprit data which helped no end - DBE was pretty much impossible on it 'cos there ain't exactly a lot of background there!

[Icesheet]

I would love it if my destruction ended up like this! Great image 👏🏻 

[ollypenrice]

That's a great result. The band of dust is much in favour at the moment and is superb in this rendition.

Olly

[geeklee]

15 hours ago, The Lazy Astronomer said:

An unexpected advantage was the wider FOV from the little Sharpstar allowed me to use the multiscale gradient removal technique on the Esprit data which helped no end - DBE was pretty much impossible on it 'cos there ain't exactly a lot of background there!

Ah, that's a nice bonus and something I've not had a chance to utilise yet.  I'm looking forward to PixInsight's MARS project.  Thanks for the extra details 👍

[The Lazy Astronomer]

13 hours ago, Icesheet said:

I would love it if my destruction ended up like this! Great image 👏🏻 

You didn't see the previous 4 versions!! 😆

[The Lazy Astronomer]

4 hours ago, ollypenrice said:

That's a great result. The band of dust is much in favour at the moment and is superb in this rendition.

Olly

High praise indeed! Thanks very much. I've gone a bit mad for dust in general at the minute, which perhaps is not the smartest thing to be trying from a B5-ish area. Perhaps a trip to Les Granges is in order 🤔

2 hours ago, geeklee said:

Ah, that's a nice bonus and something I've not had a chance to utilise yet.  I'm looking forward to PixInsight's MARS project.  Thanks for the extra details 👍

Before this image, I wasn't sure of the benefit of MARS, given how good all the various gradient removal methods are, but now I'm convinced. Last I heard they had around 1/3 of the northern hemisphere covered, so probably still quite a way to go until it's released, sadly.