Helix HOO - NII data

[Slawomir (Suavi)]

Hi all,

Sharing my first attempt at combining Ha and OIII data for the Helix. I am hoping to also add NII data in the coming weeks to put together a tri-colour image.

Acquisition details:

CFF 105mm at f/4.5 (with Riccardi reducer)
30 hours of OIII
38.5 hours of Ha

A link to Astrobin: https://www.astrobin.com/full/362928/0/?nc=user

Version with a touch of noise reduction: https://www.astrobin.com/full/362928/B/


Third version with a more aggressive histogram stretch: https://www.astrobin.com/full/362928/D/?nc=user


This is my first planetary nebula, so colours and processing certainly need refinement.

Thank you for looking
Suavi

[miki63au]

Amazing ... very sharp



Mick

[strongmanmike (Michael)]

Excellent Smithers...exccellleeent

[RickS (Rick)]

A great start, Suavi!

[cometcatcher (Kevin)]

Looks great Suavi! How did you get neutral colour stars in a bi-colour image?

[vlazg (George)]

Fantastic Helix Suavi, looking forward to the NII

[Peter Ward]

Things I'd fix...

Colours are too pastel.
Stars show no colour variation...RGB field stars would be cool.
A deep luminance channel may well reveal the many faint fuzzies also present but not seen here so far...it's tough with 105mm of aperture.

That said...

Gee, the data is so tight....a few tweaks and dare I say... you'll
have an award winning result.

This is really great stuff.

[Placidus (Mike and Trish)]

Excellent acquisition and processing, and with 4% of the photon flux we threw at it. Brilliant.

[troypiggo (Troy)]

Rounds and tight stars across the field - always the foundation for an awesome image. Well done.

[Ryderscope (Rodney)]

The deep detail of the nebula has come through well Suavi.

[gregbradley]

Lovely colours and tight details. A high class Helix.

Greg.

[Slawomir (Suavi)]

Thank you all for such kind feedback.

It has been my longest exposure by miles and I enjoyed slowly adding data from night after night. ICX in QSI body is very clean - having signal only 1 ADU above the floor (about 0.25e) and there is absolutely no sign of any glow or fixed pattern even with an extreme histogram stretch. I did not use darks and did not apply noise reduction nor decon.

The thin long bow/shockwave at the 'top' of the Helix gets only one photon per pixel per hour of exposure with my set up - I personally think it's remarkable that an average amateur has access to technology allowing to capture such faint signal.

Kevin - Creating starless master HA and OIII and combining those for RGB allows for neutral star colours in narrowband images.

RGB stars are certainly on the cards, thank you for the advice Peter. Let's hope weather will be good later next week after the Moon will start moving away from the Helix.

Who knows, maybe I will be lucky to reach a century with the total exposure for this image

[graham.hobart (Graham stevens)]

EEK! A giant effort mate and one smooth lookin eyeball. lovely!

[Geoff45 (Geoff)]

Great stuff Suavi, although I would agree with Peter that the colours are too pastel.
Geoff

[Camelopardalis (Dunk)]

Beautiful image Suavi way deeper than we can catch here in Brisvegas...

[Paul Haese]

Nice detail Suavi. I also don't mind the colour, maybe a bit pink but I think it is ok. I like the outer chevron detailing, it only comes with integration. At full resolution it is an interesting image to cruise around.

[Slawomir (Suavi)]

Thank you all again for encouragement and feedback.

I find it a bit tricky to balance colours with bi-colour data, so I will leave it as is and play with colours again, once I finish collecting NII, and hopefully will then add RGB stars as well.

Applied a touch of noise reduction and tried to bring out the outer details within reason: https://www.astrobin.com/full/362928/B/

Thank you for looking
Suavi

[Atmos (Colin)]

It's more of a pink than a red that you find in many of the HOO images of Helix but I quite like it.
Very nice and VERY smooth

[Slawomir (Suavi)]

Thanks Colin. It might have been my mood on that day subconsciously directing my processing towards pinkish colours

Anyway, I was just having a go at processing the data since there is one more channel yet to be added at some point to the image, and also RGB stars as well.

[Slawomir (Suavi)]

Hi all,

I tried to squeeze a bit more out of the data I have: https://www.astrobin.com/full/362928/D/?nc=user

Focus was on showing the outer bits - colours will be adjusted once I complete collecting NII data.

Thank you for looking
Suavi