astro_s_b_

Got a few targets on this one. I’ve been really loving this wide field set up. And while the camera definitely has its limitations, I’ve been really loving the beauty of such wide shots and that I still maintain some details even though it is so wide. I was hoping to add a fair amount of Ha to this one, but with the weather lately it has been challenging. So, I decided to pull my equipment down and give it all its annual checkup. I will definitely revisit this one next year.

We’ve got the Jellyfish nebula(IC 443) on the left side. That’s a supernova remnant that created a neutron star in the center. Pretty darn cool. The nebula on the bottom is an emission nebula called the monkey head nebula(NGC2174/75) that is mainly hydrogen gas being lit up by intense radiation and by stellar winds from the young stars in its center. And on the upper right are the star clusters M35(the small cluster) and NGC2168(the more open one). It’s pretty fun being able to get so many awesome and different parts of our galaxy in one shot. I’m excited for MW season already with this rig. Haha. Anyhoo. Hope you all enjoy. It was a fun one for me!

🚨 Nerd 🚨

RGB

Total Integrarion: 30ish hours

RGB 300s subs

Telescope: V***n VSD100 f3.8
Mount: Software Bisque MyT
Camera: FLI ML50100
Filters: Chroma LRGB
Focuser: Optec Leo
Controlled with an Eagle3 Pro
Capture Software: The SkyX
Processed in Pixinsight entirely: tweaked in photoshop.

NGC 1333

This is a pretty wide field view of NGC 1333(the Embryo Nebula). Honestly there are too many things in this frame to list. But I definitely love this FOV!! This was just a test shot to see if the little scope could handle a chip this big. It certainly can with the help of modern software, specifically BlurX with the new AI. Pretty impressive what it’s capable of.

I really wasn’t expecting much from this setup. Just more of let’s get it set up and see what happens. Well, I’m pretty stoked on the results. Especially given that this was all shot in 1 night with less than ideal conditions and completely unguided. Not too shabby for an outdated low QE(50%) CCD sensor on a fast smallish refractor. Hope you guys like it!

Copied from Wikipedia

NGC 1333 is a reflection nebula located in the northern constellation Perseus, positioned next to the southern constellation border with Ta**us and Aries.[3] It was first discovered by German astronomer Eduard Schönfeld in 1855.[4] The nebula is visible as a hazy patch in a small telescope, while a larger aperture will show a pair of dark nebulae designated Barnard 1 and Barnard 2.[5] It is associated with a dark cloud L1450 (Barnard 205). Estimates of the distance to this nebula range from 980–1,140 ly

🚨 Nerd 🚨

RGB

Total Integrarion: 6ish hours

RGB 300s subs

Telescope: V***n VSD100 f3.8
Mount: Software Bisque MyT
Camera: FLI ML50100
Filters: Chroma LRGB
Focuser: Optec Leo
Controlled with an Eagle3 Pro
Capture Software: The SkyX
Processed in Pixinsight entirely: tweaked in photoshop.

LDN 1622 aka the boogeyman nebula located near the constellation of Orion just on the outside of his right hand torso area. We’ve had so much going on lately, I don’t even know how much time I spent on this target. And I haven’t been able to do my typical workflow with my images lately. But this is an HaRGB image with a very heavy push of the Ha data. I’ll probably go back and rework it and try to make the dust there a more grey tone so it seems a little more natural, but I do kinda like this version. Hope you like it too!

🚨 Nerd 🚨

HaRGB

Total Integrarion: 🤷🏼‍♂️

RGB 300s subs
Ha 1800s subs

Telescope: AG Optical 14.5” iDK f/6 .7
Mount: Software Bisque Mx+
Camera: FLI PL16803
Filters: Chroma LRGB
Focuser: Optec Gemini
Controlled with an Eagle4 Pro
Capture Software: The SkyX
Processed in Pixinsight entirely: tweaked in photoshop.

Here is my “true color” version of NGC 7635 aka The Bubble Nebula. This dusty region is about 7100 light years away from earth in the constellation Cassiopeia.

At first I didn’t really love my processing on it, but as I’ve sat with it longer, it’s grown on me a little. Not too many great examples of this target, at this FOV, in LRGB out there so I’m not even sure if I pulled out the dust all that well. I spent a lot of time on this target and was a little underwhelmed by how much there was, so it’s either very faint, just not there, or I’m not that great at pulling it all out.

Blows my mind there is just a structured bubble like this in space. Freaking crazy. Hope you like it! Included a couple crops of the bubble itself.

🚨 Nerd 🚨

LRGB

Total Integrarion: 41 hours

RGB 300s around 5 hrs ea
L 300s 26 hours

Telescope: AG Optical 14.5” iDK f/6 .7
Mount: Software Bisque Mx+
Camera: FLI PL16803
Filters: Chroma LRGB
Focuser: Optec Gemini
Controlled with an Eagle4 Pro
Capture Software: The SkyX
Processed in Pixinsight entirely: tweaked in photoshop.

Here we got Barnard 150 aka The Seahorse nebula. This is considered a dark nebula since it’s just some dark dust up in the sky not being lit up by ionizing stars and hydrogen gas. Don’t kid yourself though, still got some star makin goin on in those dark clouds. She’s about 1200 light years away from earth near the constellation Cepheus. I see this picture and I see everything wrong with it. But at the end of the day, it’s still pretty cool to point a telescope at the sky and take pictures like this, with all her flaws, she still purdy and cool. Hope you like it!

Pixinsight process: linear fit, noiseX, blurX, channel combination, starX, histogram transformation, curves transformation, add stars, saturation.

🚨 Nerd 🚨

RGB

Total Integrarion: 6 hours

RGB 300s around 2 hrs ea

Telescope: Pentax 125SDP f/6.4
Mount: Software Bisque MyT
Camera: QHY268m
Filters: Chroma LRGB
Focuser: Optec Leo
Controlled with an Eagle3pro
Capture Software: The SkyX
Processed in Pixinsight entirely: tweaked in photoshop.

Happy Sunday y’all! This here is the Cave nebula. Located in the constellation Cepheus. This was one of those “waiting for the target I want to rise so I’ll just shoot this” targets. Actually kinda glad with how it turned out. Pretty interesting region of the sky. Hope you guys like it! Swipe for the raw, only screen stretched image.

Pixinsight process: linear fit, noiseX, blurX, channel combination, starX, histogram transformation, curves transformation, add stars, saturation.

🚨 Nerd 🚨

LRGB

Total Integrarion: 21 hours

RGB 300s around 2 hrs ea
Luminance 300s: 15 hrs

Telescope: AG Optical 14.5” iDK f/6.7
Mount: Software Bisque Mx+
Camera: FLI PL 16803
Filters: Chroma LRGB
Focuser: Optec Gemini
Controlled with an Eagle4pro
Capture Software: The SkyX
Processed in Pixinsight entirely: tweaked in photoshop.

IC 434 with Barnard 33 aka The Horsehead Nebula

Here is my take! When I was a kid I was obsessed with the picture took sometime in the late 80s or early 90s. I would seriously stare at it and just dream of space with how incredible the image was. It absolutely blew my mind. My 10 year old self is completely over the moon that I took this picture. It’s just incredible what tools are accessible to people to take these images. Not that long ago it was the stuff of a kids dream. This region is one of them most photographed regions in the northern hemisphere. So it seems silly to be so stoked on something that pretty much everyone doing AP has shot at some point. That being said, this certainly isn’t the best image you will see of it, but it definitely has made this 10 year old with 30 years of life experience incredibly happy. Hope you all enjoy it! Swipe for the lightly processed, channel combination and light stretch, version!

Copied from Wikipedia for those that don’t know…

The Horsehead Nebula (also known as Barnard 33 or B33) is a small dark nebula in the constellation Orion.[2] The nebula is located just to the south of Alnitak, the easternmost star of Orion's Belt, and is part of the much larger Orion molecular cloud complex. It appears within the southern region of the dense dust cloud known as Lynds 1630, along the edge of the much larger, active star-forming H II region called IC 434.

🚨 Nerd 🚨

HaLRGB
Time on target: 96 hours
Total Integrarion: 55 hours

RGB 300s around 6 hrs ea
Luminance: 22 hours
Hydrogen Alpha: 15 hours

Telescope: AG Optical 14.5” iDK f/6.7
Mount: Software Bisque Mx+
Camera: FLI PL 16803
Filters: Chroma RGB
Focuser: Optec Gemini
Controlled with an Eagle4pro
Capture Software: The SkyX
Processed in Pixinsight entirely: tweaked in photoshop.

IC 1396 aka The Elephant Trunk Nebula

Here is a pretty close up image of the elephant trunk nebula in true color RGB. This is what it would look like if our eyes were sensitive enough! So cool!

I went ahead and included a few different edits so you can see what the image editing process can do. The first one is a little different than my typical workflow and I definitely pushed it a little farther than I normally do, didn’t mask very well, but I actually think it doesn’t look too bad being pushed so hard and overall sloppy processing. Second image is one that’s a little more toned down but still allows for a lot of contrast and you can really see those wispy parts coming off of the trunk section. And the last image is the raw image right after I combined the 3 channels red green blue, very minimal processing, just a light stretch. The data was actually fairly clean, except for…..the damn stars. Turns out shooting through 80-95% humidity at 2464mm focal length will give you less than desirable stars. So! That is my next big goal, to find a way to get better looking stars!

Anyways, hope you guys like it! I really enjoyed processing this one and was having a hard time deciding which one I like the best. I do wish I had gotten 2x the integration on it…thanks for looking!

🚨 Nerd 🚨

RGB 300s around 6hrs ea
Total integrated: 18hrs-ish

Telescope: AG Optical 14.5” iDK f/6.7
Mount: Software Bisque Mx+
Camera: FLI PL 16803
Filters: Chroma RGB
Focuser: Optec Gemini
Controlled with an Eagle4pro
Capture Software: The SkyX
Processed in Pixinsight entirely: tweaked in photoshop.

NGC 1499 in true color RGB.

Here is the California nebula I shot last winter that I lost the thumb drive for and just found this week! Yaaaay! Christmas in September! I had been working on a previous edit with incredibly limited data and was not very happy with the look. But now I have all this data! Whoop whoop. Anyhoo. This is 13 hours of just RGB. Honestly, I’m pretty blown away by all the dang dust. Was definitely not expecting that much. And I love that you can see where the nebula is getting ionized from all the other dust around. So cool! The first image is one that isn’t pushed all that hard and the nebula color is close to right after channel combination. The other two were pushed a little harder to tweak the color so it was a more deeper red tone, one closer to the type you typically see.

For those that don’t know, this nebula is fairly close to the Pleiades, in the constellation Perseus and is about 1000 light years away from earth. Hope you like it!

🚨 Nerd 🚨

RGB 300s 4 hrs ea GB 5 hours R
Total integrated: 13hrs

Telescope: V***n VSD100 f/3.8
Mount: Software Bisque Myt
Camera: FLI PL 16803
Filters: Chroma RGB
Focuser: Optec Leo focuser
Controlled with an Eagle4pro
Capture Software: The SkyX
Processed in Pixinsight entirely tweaked in photoshop.

Emission nebula shot in broadband RGB.

Today we have the Pac-Man nebula! This nebula is in the constellation of Cassiopeia and is around 10,000 light years from earth. It is a fairly bright nebula with very beautiful dark bands of dust and bok globules. I love the single little globule just floating in the middle of all that dust.

There is something to learn on every target. I’m new to the longer focal length shooting so still have quite a bit to learn. Once again, the stars were driving me nuts. And I realized that I’m just shooting too long of exposures for these stars. So no matter what I do they’re always blown out and pure white. Well, with todays incredible star removal tools, one is able to incorporate stars shot from shorter exposure lengths so they aren’t so blown out. And that is what I will make sure I’m doing in the future. With my refractors I didn’t have to worry about that so much. But this reflector has been causing me to change my whole acquisition processes. Hopefully it will improve my overall image quality and processing! But for this one, I had to just call it with the stars blown out. Oh well. Anyhoo. I hope you like it!

🚨 Nerd 🚨

RGB 300s 2 hrs ea
Total integrated: 6hrs

Telescope: AG Optical 14.5” iDK f/6.7
Mount: Software Bisque Mx+
Camera: FLI PL 16803
Filters: Chroma RGB
Focuser: Optec Gemini rotating focuser
Controlled with an Eagle4pro
Capture Software: The SkyX
Processed in Pixinsight entirely tweaked in photoshop.

Continuing with the “Emission Nebula Shot in Broadband” title; here we have a tight crop of the North American nebula. We’re looking at Mexico and the Gulf of Mexico sections of the nebula. This section is also called The Cygnus Wall. This was a fun one for me as I got to process some refractor data. Much easier to deal with data that doesn’t have diffraction spikes on all the stars. I also tried a different approach for star reduction and saturation. I added one edit where I didn’t do very much with the stars! I think it turned out pretty nice! Hope you like it!

🚨 Nerd 🚨

RGB 300s 2 hrs ea
Total integrated: 6hrs

Telescope: Pentax 125SDP
Mount: Software Bisque Myt
Camera: Qhy 268m
Filters: Chroma RGB
Focuser: Optec Leo
Controlled with an Eagle3pro
Capture Software: The SkyX
Processed in Pixinsight entirely tweaked in photoshop.

Here we have the wizard nebula! Another emission nebula that I shot in true color RGB. This nebula is located in the constellation Cepheus. This was one of the first targets I shot with the new scope so the data is pretty limited. And was shot over the course of a single night. I feel like yet again, the stars were driving me absolutely nuts but ended up growing on me. This summer has been incredibly humid which has caused some significant halos in the B channel. Did the best I could processing them. Hope you like it!

🚨 Nerd 🚨

RGB 300s 2 hrs ea
Total integrated: 6hrs

Telescope: AG Optical 14.5” iDK f/6.7
Mount: Software Bisque Mx+
Camera: FLI PL16803
Filters: Chroma RGB
Focuser: Optec Gemini
Controlled with an Eagle4pro
Capture Software: The SkyX
Processed in Pixinsight entirely tweaked in photoshop.

Here is IC 5070, a tight crop of the larger pelican nebula. I’ve always loved this target. So much going on here. And a lot of Herbig-Haro objects. For those that don’t know, those are shock waves/cones/jets from newly formed stars pushing the surrounding gases around. Pretty dang cool to be able to capture that from my backyard, if ya ask me. Anyhoo, most people shoot this in SHO and I wanted to try it in RGB, so here we are. About 13.5 hours of RGB of an incredibly dusty and rich in gases section of the sky. Personally I think the SHO edits do better justice to just how many different layers of dust and how truly complex this area is, but a simple RGB isn’t too bad at revealing that either. Hope you guys like it as much as I do.

Side note: the stars in this image were driving me absolutely bonkers. I finally had to come to terms with them and just embrace them with all their brightness. Haha. And I do have a mild obsession right now with shooting emission nebula in RGB.

🚨 Nerd 🚨

RGB 300s 4.5 hrs ea
Total integrated: 13.5hrs

Telescope: AG Optical 14.5” iDK f/6.7
Mount: Software Bisque Mx+
Camera: FLI PL16803
Filters: Chroma 3nm
Focuser: Optec Gemini
Controlled with an Eagle4pro
Capture Software: The SkyX
Processed in Pixinsight entirely tweaked in photoshop.

A star is born

Here is a recent shot of NGC 6559. This area is located right next to the lagoon nebula, my previous post, and is an intense star forming region. There is so much going on here with so many different objects. I absolutely love this area of the sky. So dynamic, unique and interesting.

Last night we welcomed the newest star to our family. Marigold Felder-McMurray graced us with her bright light at 8:48pm on 8/18. Already so dynamic, unique and interesting. We are so over the moon over she is finally here. She was definitely marching to her own beat the whole time, and kept everyone on their toes up until the moment she joined us. Mom and baby are very happy and very healthy! Whoop whoop!

🚨 Nerd 🚨

RGB 300s 2hrs ea
Total integrated: 6hrs

Telescope: AG Optical 14.5” iDK f/6.7
Mount: Software Bisque Mx+
Camera: FLI PL16803
Filters: Chroma 3nm
Focuser: Optec Gemini
Controlled with an Eagle4pro
Capture Software: The SkyX
Processed in Pixinsight entirely tweaked in photoshop.

Well, well, well, lookie what I got here! My first solid image from the new scope! To be honest I waaaaay over estimated the stability of my skies here for this focal length. Out of the few months I have had this scope, only a few nights have proved to be worth processing. It has been quite frustrating, incredibly disappointing, and at the same time humbling. When those pictures roll off the camera, and they’re sharp and crisp though, that right there is a great feeling. Getting this image together has made it all almost worth it. Almost. Haha. I am actually really pleased with this image. Considering how little integration time there is, and the fact I thought everything was doo doo, turned out kinda nice. I’m hoping that my issues are just seasonal with this thing. But enough with the drama!

For those that don’t know. This is M8 or the Lagoon Nebula. Roughly 4100 light years away in the constellation Sagittarius. I chose this target as my first one to spend real time with as it is dynamic and bright! First image is a slight crop, second is starless and the third image is the raw image with just a slight stretch and no processing done to it. Hope you like it!

🚨 Nerd 🚨

RGB 300s 2hrs ea
Total integrated: 6hrs

Telescope: AG Optical 14.5” iDK f/6.7
Mount: Software Bisque Mx+
Camera: FLI PL16803
Filters: Chroma 3nm
Focuser: Optec Gemini
Controlled with an Eagle4pro
Capture Software: The SkyX
Processed in Pixinsight entirely, tweaked in photoshop.

Rosette and friends

Here is some data that I’m finally getting around to processing. I shot this back in November/December. Right before California turned into a river. I feel like it’s been cloudy ever since…..anyhoo. Here is the Rosette nebula…again…..I’ve wanted to shoot this exact frame for quite some time now.

Tons of really nice Ha gas in there! This is an HaRGB image with Ha and R being blended and then Ha applied as the Luminance layer. This nebula is something like 5200 light years away in the constellation Monoceros and is a pretty popular winter target. I am really just blown away that I can just point a telescope at the sky and take pictures of this stuff. So dang cool! Hope you like it!

🚨 Nerd 🚨

Ha: 900s 13.5hrs
RGB 600s 2hrs ea
Total integrated: 19.5hrs

Telescope: V***n VSD100
Mount: Software Bisque MyT
Camera: FLI PL16803
Filters: Chroma 3nm
Focuser: Optec Leo
Controlled with an Eagle4pro
Capture Software: The SkyX
Processed in Pixinsight entirely

This is an image I finished up back in September but didn’t post it. This is a wide field of the cocoon nebula. I imaged this target last year with the QHY 600m CMOS camera. I revisited it this year to see the visual difference between CCD and CMOS. On paper CMOS blows CCD out of the water. In practice though, I see that the raw data from my ccd is much smoother and cleaner. And personally I find CCD data much much easier to process. But that’s just me. Anyhoo, this image is about 12 hours of each channel RGB and around 10 hours of Ha. Gonna keep working this data to try to pull out those faint hydrogen gas clouds out some more!

🚨 Nerd alert 🚨

Time are target: 34 hours

RGB: 600s/ea: 12 hrs
Ha: 40 900s: 10hrs
Total integration: 22hrs

Telescope: Pentax 125SDP
Mount: Software Bisque Mx+
Camera: FLI ML 50100
Filters: LRGB Chroma 65mm filters Ha 3nm
Guide camera: Starlight Xpress lodestar pro
Focuser: Optec Gemini rotating focuser
Controlled with an Eagle 3 running The SkyX
Processed in pixinsight entirely

Howdy! It’s been a looong time since I posted anything. But here is my take on the great andromeda galaxy.

This was one of the very first targets I ever shot. The first time I took a picture of it, I was blown away, couldn’t believe I got an image of a galaxy, on my camera!! I was so excited that I shared that picture with everyone I knew. And my father in law wanted to print it off and hang it on the wall in his office. I was mortified to say the least. It was a terrible image. Blown out core, only 1 channel, red, and like 10 2 minute subs. But then he passed away unexpectedly a couple years ago so I wasn’t able to redeem this target so he could print it off and hang it up. I tried to image it last year, but just wasn’t happy with the results. Well, this year I told myself I was going to get serious about it and try to and do an image that he would enjoy. I did some reading, changed some things up in my work flow, spent waaaay too long on it, deleting this, starting over here, but as it turns out, this was only for me, because now I realize, he did actually enjoy that first picture, that I said was horrible. And I should have just let him print it off and hang it up. You never know how much longer you or anyone will be here, and letting people close to you enjoy the things you do, no matter how terrible YOU think they are, can be just as rewarding as sharing the “good” things you do. It seems so silly now because at some point, you won’t be able to share anything at all.

So this picture is dedicated to him. And I have decided to include all major steps of the processing I did, just the images. Because they all matter! Haha. But here is the andromeda galaxy, that is about 2.5 million light years away from earth, that long after we are gone, will collide with our own galaxy, in about 4 billion or so years. Pretty cool!

Alrighty. It’s been a very long time since my last post. I personally just haven’t been very excited about my processing or my workflow. I’m trying to find the time to put my head down and workout a better method, but life has a way of getting in the way, haha.

Anyhoo, this is a target that I started working on last year, but I started shooting it in September and at that point I was only able to get an hour or so per night. So I told myself I would come back to it in the spring, and I did! There aren’t too many great examples of this area to go off of, so i just went with it. This was hard for me to process as there are a ton of stars in this region and i just push sliders until i find something that looks right. The stars look like doo doo tho so don’t zoom in too much. Here is my version of M24 also knows as the small Sagittarius star cloud shot in HaLRGB

Ha 1800s/13hrs
L 600s/26hrs
R 900s/14hrs
G 900s/9hrs
B 900s/12hrs

Telescope: Pentax 125SDP
Mount: Software Bisque Mx+
Camera: FLI ML 50100
Filters: Chroma 65mm filters
Guide camera: Starlight Xpress lodestar pro
Focuser: Optec Gemini rotating focuser
Controlled with an Eagle 3 running The SkyX
Processed in pixinsight entirely

Test test

Whelp. I thought I could do better on this image with my Ha data and a few more hours of each channel, RGB, integration, but the subs were much less than desirable. And despite what I tell myself, it’s still pretty fun and cool to be able to put out an image with only a few hours of integration time.

Some of you following me know that I am a very avid CCD user, to a fault probably. I will say this about this image and CMOS sensors, they(CMOs) are extremely convenient. They allow someone to put out an image with minimal integration times and still have good details. But, at the same time, lacking in well depth and a pixel size that is typically 1/2-1/3 the size of CCD they don’t capture those ever so faint dusty parts when comparing single subs of the same exposure to a ccd sensor. But! The lack of sensor defects and other cosmetic sensor issues has proven a pretty big bonus and took my processing time down from like 2 hours to 1 hour.

Am I happy with this image? Meh. I don’t think I was able to capture the background and surrounding stars well enough. Could a longer on target time do that? Probably, but with such small pixels that this camera has, I’m at the mercy of the environment much more than with ccd. Each, CCD and CMOS have proven very valuable in their own right. However there are stark differences between the two and I personally still prefer the former.

Enough with my ramblings though. Here is my CMOS image of M101 aka the pinwheel galaxy. An edge on spiral galaxy roughly 21 million light years away. That means, this light, from this galaxy, has been traveling 21 million years to end up being captured by my silly CMOS camera. Never gets old, the scale of these things. Also, thanks to for the fluff piece.

This was a pretty fun target to get for me. I could only got about 4 hours each night on target because of a giant oak tree right in the way. I’ve been shooting this since early December. I reworked restacked and reverythinged a few times with this one. It’s pretty nice not having to break down and set up each night. This is the full frame as there was very little rotation between nights. I had a little over 100 hours of acquisition but only ended up using 52 hours. The one good thing about long integration times is that you can really pick and chose only the best subs to go in. I probably could have done a lot more to this image to really get more dust and contrast but I do prefer a lighter touch to a heavier one. Hope you like it!

The target in the center is M78 which is in the Orion Nebula. With a section of Barnards loop of hydrogen gas up in the left corner. This region of the sky is full of really cool targets. This is one I’ve always wanted to shoot. This is a true color image compromising of only LRGB.

🚨 Nerd alert 🚨

RGB 900s exposures
Luminance 600s exposures.

Telescope: Pentax 125SDP
Mount: Software Bisque Mx+
Camera: FLI ML 50100
Filters: Chroma 65mm square
Guide camera: Starlight Xpress lodestar pro
Focuser: Optec Gemini rotating focuser
Controlled with an Eagle 3 running The SkyX
Processed in Pixinsight

Howdy y’all! I’ve finished up this image to what I think is the best that I can do. This certainly isn’t the best image you’ll see of the Heart Nebula. But, it is certainly one of the least processed images.

In the past year or so I have found myself trying to get back to reality of astrophotography. Heck. I even shot an analog image. Which I should do again. But that means trying to do as little to the image as possible. I do find there to be beauty in the lightly processed LRGB images. The typical SHO images as well as the heavily star reduced RGB images are beautiful in their own right. They’re works of art. I’ve come to the place that while I want to showcase the targets, I also want to show everyone just how beautiful these familiar targets can be with minimal processing. That being said, this image is a LRGB image that doesn’t have much else applied to it other than histogram stretching. So, no star reduction, no multi layered reductions. This is what my sensor shot, and has been stretched with curves and saturation added.

I wanted to do an LRGB HaLRGB HH+OO and an SHO I have the data, but there are some issues with my OIII data that will require heavy processing. Haha. This one was easy. So I hope you enjoy. (Continued)

I deleted my previous post on this image as I think this final version is better. I typically do that to myself. I work on an image. Get excited then post it and continue to work and add data. So all of the images I post here actually aren’t the “best versions”. So I’m gonna go ahead and include the 3 versions i did. Adding L data really cleaned up the artifacts. The final version is an HaLRGB image.

Whelp, I finally put together an image from my QHY 600m. I had some issues with artifacts in this image. Not sure exactly where in my calibration they came from, but this image is good enough for Instagram I think. Haha. I took this back in August and just now got around to processing. I did not spend much time processing at all because of the artifacts. I’m going to try and do this again in the next week or so. This is just channel combination and curves adjustments, no masking or heavy stretching. Honestly, it’s not too much different than the RGB combined image. This also is a fairly heavy crop because my Ha data had some heavy rotation to it from adjusting the camera over several nights.

This was the first light with this camera and I didn’t get much data on this target as it was setting behind our trees pretty early in the evening. This is about 3 hours of RGB and 4.5 hours of Ha. I really do like this framing though and how it appears as though the dark nebula is the tail of the cocoon nebula. Hopefully I can do it more justice in the future. But for now, this is good enough! Hope you like it! Swipe for the unedited RGB image.

IC5146 aka The Cocoon nebula with the dark nebula Barnard 168

RGB: 900s Exposures
Ha: 1800s Exposures

Telescope: V***n VSD100
Mount: iOptron CEM70EC
Camera: QHY 600M
Filters: Chroma 50mm LRGB 3nm Ha
Guide camera: ZWO 120mini on a built in OAG
Focuser: Optec Leo
Controlled with an Eagle 3 running The SkyX
Processed in Pixinsight touched up in Photoshop