This is another image using Telescope Live data – this was imaged using a super fast and wide telescope from Australia The H-alpha data was extremely high quality, and overall editing this was really fun. I’ve been trying out some new techniques to increase contrast and depth in wide nebulosity fields. and I think it worked out really well in this image. Also, after several iterations of color edits, I’ve discovered a pretty nice way to create an SHO image without using colormasks or other destructive processes – it seems to be working pretty well!
The Eagle Nebula and the Swan Nebula span this broad starscape, a telescopic view toward the Sagittarius spiral arm and the center of our Milky Way galaxy. The Eagle, also known as M16, is at top and M17, the Swan, at bottom of the frame showing the cosmic clouds as brighter regions of active star-formation. They lie along the spiral arm suffused with reddish emission charactistic of atomic hydrogen gas, and dusty dark nebulae. M17, also called the Omega Nebula, is about 5500 light-years away, while M16 is some 6500 light-years distant. The center of both nebulae are locations of well-known close-up images of star formation from the Hubble Space Telescope. In this mosaic image that extends about 3 degrees across the sky, narrowband, high-resultion image data has been used to enhance the central regions of the Eagle and Swan. The extended wings of the Eagle Nebula spread almost 120 light-years. The Swan is over 30 light-years across.
Image:
Full quality version here: https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/52712985198_6051f50cf5_o.png
Annotated Image:
Details:
Telescope: Takahashi FSQ-106ED with 0.73x focal reduce
Camera: FLI PL16083
Filters: Astrodon 2GEN, Ha (3nm), SII (3nm), OIII (3nm); 50mm square
Location: Heaven's Mirror Observatory
Date of Observations: 4/25/2021, 5/12/2021, 5/17/2021, 5/22/2021, 6/19/2021, 7/10/2021, 7/12/2021, 7/28/2021, 7/29/2021, 8/10/2021, 9/5/2021
Sii: 23 x 600s (3h 50 min)
Ha: 23 x 600s (3h 50 min)
Oiii 18 x 600s (3h)
Processing: Pixinsight
Credits: Data: Telescope Live; Processing: William OstlingProcessing:
Pre-processing and Stacking
- Linear defects from the CCD were removed using pixinisight's lineardefectdetection and lineardefectremoval script
- The subframes were weighted, registered, normalized, integrated, and drizzled in WBPP
Linear preparation of all frames:
- Starless DBE was applied to Ha, Sii, Oiii as follows:
- Starnet 2 was applied to a clone of the target image, creating an image with stars and an image without stars
- DBE was applied on the starless image to create a background model
- The background model was subtracted from the stars image
- Ha, Oiii, Sii were made starlesss using Starnet 2
- A low contrast mask was created and applied to Ha, Oiii, Sii
- Noise Xterminator was applied with strength 81 and detail 0
- Sii, Ha, Oiii were combined to create an SHO image
- the SHO image histogram was evened
Stretching
- The H-alpha image was stretched using GHS
- The SHO image was stretched using GHS
Non-Linear Adjustments
- LRGB combination to combine Ha and SHO image
- Background level was set to .115
- Color and brightness adjustments using curves transformation
- HDR multiscale transformation
- Local Histogram Equalization
- Local Fuzzy Histogram Hyperbolization
- Saturation adjustments
- Dark Structures enhance
- Add stars back to image
- Color adjustments
- Nebulosity enhancement