NGC6164-5 Ha and O3

[pmrid]

I've managed 2 nights in a row when I was able to open the roof for a few hours. I managed about 3 hours of Ha and the same of O3 on this target - the main aim being to see how much of that outer shell of reflection nebula I could grab with a relatively small scope. The scope was an ED127 at f 7.5 and the CCD was an SX_VR H16. I lost a few frames and in the end, the 2 channels ended up about 2 1/2 hours each of 20 minute subs.

The processing is a mess. With just Ha and O3, it became a maganta explosion and taming that was difficult but for what it's worth, here is the end result.

Enjoy (or not).

Peter

[cometcatcher]

Looks good Peter. You have a lot of outer shell there!

[gregbradley]

You got a lot of detail there and I like the delicate blues. I presume you don't like the browny coloured neb area. How did you create an RGB combine?

Neil Fleming has a formula for bicolour at his website. Its Ha as red, O111 as blue and an artificial O111 x 2 + Ha all divided by 2 using pixel math as green (I think I have the colour assignments right).

That usually gives a very light creamy, very light brown colour which is quit pleasant and leaves the blues intact.

Greg.

[pmrid]

G'day Greg and Kevin. Greg, the rust-coloured Ha is not the best is it? I just did a quick and dirty Red and Blue in PS6 and then a colour-select/magenta/and dropped it to zero. Bit of High Pass layer masking and that was it. I'll give the synthetic green a try and see how it improves it. Might get the red back into some sort of balance.

Peter

[AlexN]

Detail looks good Pete.

[Bassnut]

given the scope, thats pretty exceptional indeed!. Shame you dont have a bigger pic to click to.

[RickS]

Very similar FOV to the one I did last year, Peter. Looks like interesting data and worthy of some experimentation on colour. Bi-colour can be just as challenging as full Hubble palette.

Cheers,
Rick.

[jase]

All the details present there Peter. I don't mind the rusty red hue. Would be nice to see a contrasting colour such as a teal or turquoise blue for the OIII shockwave. Really opposites of a colour wheel generally work well together. Great advice from others on creating a bi-colour image and synth green channel too. I hope to see more.

[rustigsmed]

Nice work Peter that shell is super faint you've brought a fair bit of it out there!

Russ

[strongmanmike]

I agree with Russell, nice job on the shell there :thumbsup:

The colour result is not too bad either especially considering it is only bi colour.

Mike