This is a Sharpless2 that I know well and turned out well with the Stellarvue and 10h on my old CCD.  I called it the Scarlet letter as looked like a Red "A" and is the only image I ever got published.


Sh2 96 H-alpha and RGB (The Scarlet Letter?)

Now that I have dark sky's available the "A" stands our less as it is in a sea of H-alpha in the background that I present in the mouseover.  The H-alpha was processed using GHS setting the Symmetry Point to the dull areas.

I worked on the stars in this image as best I could.  The theory is to stretch the color with Arcsinh twice and then to follow up with a histogram stretch once the colors are saturated. 
There is a nice tutorial on this. 
I followed the tutorial and was able to reproduce the effects in GHS using the Color Stretch twice followed up with the GHS RGB stretch, the equivalent of HT in PI.  I think this is about as much color as I want, but maybe will try jazzing it up in my next image.

A tried a couple methods for added in the stars to the HA image but settled on the tried and true RGB Stars-to-Narrowband Transfer using PixelMath - V14 by Bill Blanshan.  I also used the Photoshop equivalent and the results were similar.  I am a little irritated since both the PI and PS methods leave little halos and I am not sure what I can do about that and some of the brighter stars have white centers but I think that is the physics of the light. 

Anyway, to turn to the color of the H-alpha was pointed out to me that the actual color involves H-beta too, which is bluer... which I get in Pixelmath and I sorta like.  I found this nice quote:



Information on Sh2 96 from GalaxyMap:

Sh 2-91, Sh 2-94 and Sh 2-96 are all filaments of the supernova remnant SNR 065.2+05.7, which has a diameter of about 70 parsecs and an age of about 20 thousand year. The diameter is 70 parsecs and age about 20 thousand years.[url=http://galaxymap.org/cat/view/sharpless/96#note_1]

A Russian paper from 2010 concludes that several supernova explosions may have occurred in this region. [url=http://galaxymap.org/cat/view/sharpless/96#note_2]

The full extent of the supernova remnant can be seen in the visual frequency images in a 2004 paper. [url=http://galaxymap.org/cat/view/sharpless/96#note_3]

Supports Reich et. al. on this being part of the supernova remnant.[url=http://galaxymap.org/cat/view/sharpless/96#note_4]

Part of SNR G65.2+5.7[url=http://galaxymap.org/cat/view/sharpless/96#note_5]

GENERAL NOTE ON SHARPLESS2 OBJECTS>>>>>>>>>>>>>

There are 313 Sh2 objects.  All now imaged.

This is my collection:

Sharpless2

Wide-Angle Hydrogen Alpha Nikon Image Sh2 79-171

Please note there is also a Sharpless2 Group with now more than 2600 examples.

Sharpless2 Group

Other useful links include:

Gary Imm's Collection

GalaxyMap's Collection

The Sharpless Catalog

The MDW H-alpha Sky Survey

Reiner Vogel's detailed observing catalog

Hope you enjoy these obscure but interesting objects...