StarTools

Last year I took a short two hour exposure on the Cocoon Nebula with my old DSLR and could already see quite some dust (https://astrob.in/0eeozn/B/). So I reasoned that it might be worth taking a longer look at it with a cooled OSC... And there are some images around that show quite some hydrogen in that area around the Cocoon. Thus I tried to get a night of duo NB data in addition to broadband in order to add Ha via NBAccent. Gosh, these hydrogen clouds are faint. I managed to squeeze out some signal from the ~6 hours of duo NB but it wasn't easy...


It's one of those images that looks pretty different on different screens. Fine on my processing laptop, okay on my phone, not so great on my working laptop.

Details on Astrobin: https://www.astrobin.com/dszb6q/

Regards
Stefan

PS. Maybe I shouldn't show this as a comparison, but some may not have seen the Coccon in a real deep exposure with over 30 hours with an F2 system and a mono cam, done by a world class astrophotographer... so here's Marcel Drechsler's take on it (https://www.astrobin.com/362666/):

Yours has the advantage of still looking like the Cocoon Nebula!

Well done, Stefan!

I mean you really picked up a lot. I remember when we did this for the CN monthly challenge, and I had seen those Ha "claws" in sample images...and so of course thought I might be able to get them. With my slow refractor, f/s DSLR, and L-eNhance. Nope.

Now, I still ended up with what I thought was a nice Coccoon, all purple and red, and that trailing shadow nebula just black against a very dense star field.

But yours is better. Yeah there are a lot of old targets from the past I could now revisit with the f/4 Newt and 2600.

The pro image -- well, it's beautiful and all that, with the color and detail and high SNR. Does it strike anyone as looking artificially "layered" though? Maybe it's just me.

dx_ron wrote: ↑Wed Sep 07, 2022 11:30 pm Yours has the advantage of still looking like the Cocoon Nebula!

Mmmhh...have never seen it that way

Mike in Rancho wrote: ↑Thu Sep 08, 2022 5:55 am I remember when we did this for the CN monthly challenge, and I had seen those Ha "claws" in sample images...and so of course thought I might be able to get them. With my slow refractor, f/s DSLR, and L-eNhance. Nope.

Yes, not so easy...

Mike in Rancho wrote: ↑Thu Sep 08, 2022 5:55 am Yeah there are a lot of old targets from the past I could now revisit with the f/4 Newt and 2600.

I guess it definitely might be worth for some of them. Probably more of the faint stuff and not the Orion Nebula

Mike in Rancho wrote: ↑Thu Sep 08, 2022 5:55 am The pro image -- well, it's beautiful and all that, with the color and detail and high SNR. Does it strike anyone as looking artificially "layered" though? Maybe it's just me.

Personally I don't have the impression. I don't have any details about Marcel's processing but from the technical information on Astrobin I guess he did an LRGB image and layered in the Ha. But the layering looks pretty natural to me.

Regards
Stefan

Stefan B wrote: ↑Thu Sep 08, 2022 6:14 am
Personally I don't have the impression. I don't have any details about Marcel's processing but from the technical information on Astrobin I guess he did an LRGB image and layered in the Ha. But the layering looks pretty natural to me.

Regards
Stefan

Maybe so. It could be the deep capture of the beige dust. Which likely is foreground materiel, and so appropriate. Or perhaps just the differentiation in colors. Something made it look a bit too 3D to me. Perhaps I'm just not used to really high level images.