A Noisy Kitty - NGC6334 with a bit too much noise!

barx1963 (Malcolm) · #1 19-08-2018, 04:47 PM

So this is an image I am not sure about. Objective was to image the Cats Paw (NGC6334) in narrowband with a longer focal length to highlight the structures that vary between the 3 main parts of the object. All three are quite different and the little 'Sharks Tooth" in the middle is really obvious at this FL. Issue is that the OIII data is really faint so ends up introducing more noise than I would like.

Collecting even this much data (4 hours 50 mins) over the past 3 weeks has been a challenge with the awful weather here in Vic recently.

Anyway, the details are:
9x10min Ha
12x10min OIII
8x10min SII
Darks, flats and bias all used

Scope: Celestron Edge HD 8" with 0.7 reducer (FL 1422mm)
Camera: Atik One 6.0
Filters: Astronomik 6NM Ha OIII and SIII
Guiding OAG and Atik GP with PHD2
Mount: Orion AZ/EQ G
Acquisition: SGP
Processing: Pixinsight from Go to Whoa (apart from resizing the JPG to post here!)

multiweb (Marc) · #2 20-08-2018, 08:47 AM

Little noisy still but a wealth of details in that shot. Top shelf.

barx1963 (Malcolm) · #3 21-08-2018, 10:37 AM

Thanks Marc
"Little" noisy is a bit kind!! The OIII is so faint in this it just adds noise all over but I need the OIII to get something resembling a decent image. Was thinking of trying a bicolour with just the Ha and SII but the couple of tests just looked weird. May have another try later today at it.

Cheers

Malcolm