This image has been in the works for quite a while. Lots of poor seeing nights through the winter greatly delayed data acquisition but it's finally done! The Tadpoles Nebula in pseudo SHO. On a short read, this nebula seems to be lit by the central cluster NGC 1893. It is similar to the Eagle nebula in that it's a star forming region with a large dust column. This time they are in the shape of a tadpole instead of a pillar.
Processing is actually rather difficult since the tadpoles themselves are much brighter than the rest of the nebula. As a result, when combining back together it blew out the image in that section. Had to utilize a lot of masking and readjustments to make it fit.
Been really busy working on the other rig so stuff has been getting delayed and it's getting hectic. The moon being nearly full is also messing with a lot of things. I also learned that my SQM is on average closer to B8 than 7. RIP. Hope I can get that sorted out soon so we are back on the imaging train. Going forward, I think after I finish up all the current projects, I'll start keeping a tally of how many subframes are lost for various reasons. It'll be good to look back and see how much other work was put into an image.
Processing Steps:
- Blink, Calibrate with Flats, Darks, and Flat Darks, and Stack in ASTAP
- Create HaOiii, SiiOiii, UVIR Cut, and HaOiii + SiiOiii stack (combined Oiii)
- Bring to PixInsight
- Combined Oiii
- DynamicCrop
- StarAlignment the other three to this one
- GradientCorrection Defaults with auto converge
- BXT Defaults
- SXT
- Channel Extraction
- Use the formula for Oiii from HaOiii splitting since Ha dominates the red channels for this stack. See previous posts for the formula
- GHS with range masking the highlights + Curves Transformation to bring the image into a nicer look.
- HaOiii
- From StarAlignment
- GradientCorrection
- BXT Defaults
- SXT
- Channel Extraction
- Utilize the HaOiii splitting pixelmath to get Ha
- GHS with range masking the highlights and curves transformation till satisfied
- SiiOiii
- From StarAlignment
- GradientCorrection
- BXT Defaults
- SXT Channel Extraction
- Utilize the SiiOiii splitting and combination pixel math equations to get Sii
- GHS with range masking till satisfied
- UVIR Cut
- From StarAlignment
- ImageSolver
- GradientCorrection
- BXT
- NXT 0.60 Denoise 0.15 Detail
- SXT generate stars
- On the Stars image GHS -> Arcsinh till satisfied
- Putting them all together
- PixelMath
- R = Sii + Ha * ~Sii + 0.5 * Ha * ~Oiii
- Sulfur 2 with Ha inversely proportional to Sii and half of Ha inversely proportional to Oiii
- G = Oiii + 0.5 * Ha * ~Oiii
- Oiii with half of Ha inversely proportional to Oiii
- B = Oiii
- Background Neutralization
- Curves Transformation slightly boosting brightness till satisfied
- NXT 0.60 Denoise and 0.15 Detail x2
- ScreenStars Combine the stars with the ~SHO image
- Done!!
Thanks for reading and clear skies!
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