A difficult nut to crack....M78

[peter shah]

Im done with this one.....a lot of the data was pretty poor but i had to use it to keep up the signal, so its not as sharp as i would like

i think its about 10 and a half hours of data now, thats including 3 and a half of Ha, ive lost count and thats not including 4hours of darks.....

The faint emission and the dust of the reflection really gives the colour a dirty look....not sure i like it

my eyes are spinning now after this process....any thoughts or pointers please

cheers

pete

[sgazer]

wow, a lot of work has gone into that and it looks great to me.

[moocher]

wow, a lot of work has gone into that and it looks great to me.

Here here!!!!

Alan

[dark knight]

Fantastic result, the detail is amazing, well worth the hard work and effort you've put in to this one. Absolutely fab.

[Sparrow]

Well done Pete - that's a lot of hard work and a result to justify it.

Very nice indeed.

[barkis]

You are being too modest Peter. It looks tremendous.

A very fine Image of M78. It's not far short of the November 2009 Apod. Image.

Ron.

[Paxo]

A totally awesome image Peter, thanks for posting.

Steve..

[NickH]

It's very very good Peter

[Tim]

I like that a lot Peter, as you say, its hard not to make that patch of sky look 'dirty'.

One question though, why so many darks?

Cheers

Tim

[Beyond_Vision]

There is so much going on in that area it's a lovely image Pete I love the mix of emission reflection and dark nebulosity. I know what you mean about the processing headache it can be hard to know where to end. It's a fantastic image as is, but I think it might be worth throwing even more data at it to smooth out the fainter outer areas.

[MikeD]

Exellent result, well worth the time you've given it.

I had plans to give this one a go but I think you may have scared me off .

Mike.

[peter shah]

thanks everyone...im going to look at this one again and see if i can do anything else with the data....ive not had much sleep over the past few nights so i think i will need to do it with fresh eyes

One question though, why so many darks?

my camera doesnt have controlled cooling and i have to do darks for every session and i do at least 6 darks each time.....it makes a massive difference when calibrating out the noise than if i was to use a master dark....this image was done over four nights and each sub was ten mins, so all in 4hours of darks

[ollypenrice]

I am a great fan of this object and have suffered as you have - except that I still haven't got a result and you have! The golden caste to the stars shows how murky it is in there as the poor things blink through the choking soot. But then there's all that clear blue. Great effort and up with the very best.

Olly

[astrokat]

pow

[themos]

That must be a very difficult image to make... awesome skills, Peter.

[James]

Well and truly cracked Peter - fantastic image (and congrats on PoW).

James