M8 and M20 LHaRGB

[Paul Haese]

I finally managed to get enough luminance for this image over the weekend. With the moon moving toward full moon I had to image early in the morning to get the data. So in the mean time I also collected a lot more SII, so you can expect a repro of my narrow band image of this same pair.

This is an integration of 15.2 hours of data.

Click here (http://paulhaese.net/M8andM20.html) for the large resolution image.

[DJScotty]

Utterly delightful! Beautifully smooth, amazing detail. Inspiring image Mr Haese :thumbsup:
It seems that Slawomir's atmoengineering friends haven't done their job yet! Anyone got any idea when the clouds are going to bugger off! :shrug::help:

[topheart]

Delightful !!

Cheers,
Tim

[gregbradley]

That looks very good Paul. Love the colour in the Lagoon.

Greg.

[Stevec35]

I would be pretty happy with that Paul. Great colour and detail and almost perfect composition.

Cheers

Steve

[Paul Haese]

Thanks Scott. It has been a pretty cloudy season even down here. Knowing Brisbane it should be better weather at this time of year. No doubt things have changed since I lived there in the 80's. On a recent visit I noted that physically the place had changed but the weather did seem the same. That was in October 2012 though.




Thanks Tim. :)



Thanks Greg. I found trying to get the golden colour in the star field was quite difficult and managing the magenta at the same time difficult. I would prefer more golden colour but I note that between the two nebulae there is a high population of blue stars too.



Thanks Steve, there are a couple of things still bothering me with the colour but I am going to leave those for now. I am going to collect a few more hours in SII to see if I can make an impact on the NB version. I tried about 300 minutes last night and it was better than the 60 minutes I had before but still not quite there. So stay tuned for another repro yet.

[Slawomir]

A beautiful image from Paul, as usual.

Bright stars show some colour gradient, but that is bearly noticable and does not really take away from images' excellent quality.



Look out of the window Scott :)

[Geoff45]

That's beautiful Paul. A slow scan reveals lots of interesting stuff--dark nebulae, scattered bits of red nebulosity. I was wondering if some background galaxies might have made it through the murk, but I couldn't find any.
Geoff

[Paul Haese]

Thanks Slawomir, you might be seeing some misalignment. Now and again I see this happening in CCDstack. I have tried a couple of different registration techniques in CCDstack2 and it seems to result in differing levels of registration. It's odd. :shrug:



Thanks Geoff, its a really interesting area, even if one has seen it many times before. The dark nebulae and Bok globules are particularly interesting to me.

I didn't see any galaxies myself and looking at the charts in The SkyX does not show any either. I wonder if there are any present?

[RickS]

Very nice, Paul! It's a shame the FOV isn't just a little bigger.

Cheers,
Rick.

[Rex]

Another beautiful shot Paul. I love all the fine filaments you have captured coming through the star field.

[Placidus]

Quite beautiful, Paul.

Pretty well midway between M8, M20, and the brightest star in the picture (4 Sagittarii) is a small rust-red nebular structure which looks for all the world like a gloved left fist. Not seen it before. It is in your narrowband shot too.

[jase]

Choices, choices Paul. NB or true colour renditions both have great details. I'm a true colour kind of guy however, so this image wins. Very enjoyable scene in particular the faint reflection neb shell around M8 which is often overlooked (or overpowered by the Ha). Colours look spot on. Well done.

[Paul Haese]

Thanks Rex for your comments.



Agreed, just not enough real estate around each object. A larger sensor would be beneficial.



Thanks Mike, I captured this last year too when I did the Trifid on its own. It's an odd looking piece of nebulosity.



Thanks Jase, I figured many people would be one or the other. Several years ago I was none too enthused about narrow band imaging but I have come to appreciate its virtues with the right sort of palette. The faint reflection nebula surrounding M8 tends to come out in dark skies and I was fairly particular about preserving it during processing. It is nice to have the data to create the choices though. :)