Bubble/Dolphin/Gourd Repro party

[Benjamin (Ben)]

After seeing Greg and Andy’s amazing images I think I ended up reducing the background too much but I wanted to explain my processing of SH2-308 to see if I’ve done some kind of aberrant processing thing. I had around 6 hours of data at f4 from Bortle 6/7 skies. Aside from the usual calibration, background extraction, HOO combination etc. I made starless noise reduced version of both the Ha and OIII (attached, the Ha being the weaker) and used these as masks to boost and sharpen detail. The stars didn’t suffer any distortion this way and I could boost the weaker Ha. I’m just really curious as to how to do this better and more faithfully to the object itself. RGB stars certainly would have helped (centrally Wolf-Rayet should be blue I think?). Astrobin: https://www.astrobin.com/full/o5302g/K/

[mswhin63 (Malcolm)]

Wow, the first time I could clearly see the Dolphin head in the image. Brilliant shot

[Benjamin (Ben)]

Cheers Malcolm. Apart from the Dolphin/gourd there’s a small region at the bottom I’m really fascinated by (see close up) which I thought I’d missed in calibrating the image but appears to be a feature. It’s a patch that looks circular, much like a faint bubble nebula.

[multiweb (Marc)]

Love the color field. Really nice details.
That feature does look like a small bubble hey?

[Andy01 (Andy)]

Originally Posted by Benjamin

there’s a small region at the bottom I’m really fascinated by (see close up) which I thought I’d missed in calibrating the image but appears to be a feature. It’s a patch that looks circular, much like a faint bubble nebula.

Nice job Ben , this time around, I used this one as reference - appears to show up your secondary soap bubble quite well.

[Benjamin (Ben)]

Thanks Marc. Curious about the little bubble and what it is?
Andy that Astrobin reference is pretty amazing! When imaging this I was surprised at how big SH2-308 is. Keen to try it with my ED80 doublet which isn’t too bad with narrowband imaging. Fingers crossed summer is better this time around!

[gregbradley]

That's a wonderful image Ben.

Greg.

[marc4darkskies (Marcus)]

Wow! Knocking it out of the park Ben!! An excellent and very beautiful image with some gorgeous detail that beckons for a closer look - which doesn't disappoint!! Your processing appears faultless given only 4 hours of exposure under Bortle 6 skies. Your treatment of the detail to give smooth transitions and colour nuance without over-saturating colours is excellent, so I feel like I just have to give you one of these ...

Please keep up the great work!

Cheers, Marcus

PS: I'd give this a go myself but I think it's just a tad too big for my 39x26 arcmin FOV

[Benjamin (Ben)]

Thanks Greg and Marcus. I think it ended up being 6 hours in total (need to update that description on Astrobin). It’s such a big thing, which is where the wider fields certainly make it more epic IMHO, but would love to go in much deeper on the bottom bit with the extra bubble to see what could be got from there: wonderful shapes and structures it seems to me.

[Placidus (Mike and Trish)]

As everyone has already said, a beautiful result. Congratulations.

Not sure about terminology. You described how you produced starless, noise reduced versions. So far, so good.

But then you said you used these as "masks" to sharpen detail. A mask is normally used to protect something. One might for example use a star mask, to perform an operation on everything except the stars.

Perhaps it would be less confusing to avoid the word 'mask' altogether, and instead said something like:

"I separated the images into stars and starless, used wavelet noise reduction and sharpening on the starless images, and then replaced the stars".

Regardless of terminology, a beautiful image.

[ChrisV (Chris)]

That is really stunning

[multiweb (Marc)]

Originally Posted by marc4darkskies

PS: I'd give this a go myself but I think it's just a tad too big for my 39x26 arcmin FOV

You could center your field on that bubble see what the deal is.

[strongmanmike (Michael)]

That's a very nice job you have done there Ben, on a particularly cool looking object

Mike

[Benjamin (Ben)]

Cheers all. Definitely can be clearer on the terminology in regard to masks and masking in general :-)