Cats Paw Nebula

[Atmos]

This is 19x5m exposures, borrowed my mums Nikon D810 for the night as I wanted the largest sensor and smallest pixels I could find :P
This is however a very compressed version, so compressed it was a real struggle to even get it near 200kb!

Anyway, a question for those that have done wider fields of this region... Is that blue nebulosity on the LHS of the image real? It is certainly strong in the data (1.5 hours of images shot at zenith a few nights ago). It is on both the LHS and RHS but the black areas to the right of the Cats Paw are black.

I've attacked this a few times and looked at a bunch of other images (mostly HaLRGB) and they don't show it. It doesn't seem like a calibration issue, DBE doesn't remove it and although it is on the left and right side of the image, it isn't in the middle which has me thinking it isn't moon cast or a gradient.

[gregbradley]

A very.nice.Paw.Colin.
Greg

[Placidus]

That's a great widefield shot, Colin. Like it a lot.

About 60% of the way toward 4 o'clock from centre, we can see a large black rat looking around. It's just below a very bright star. It had better watch out.

Trish wants to know what lens you used.

[Atmos]

Thanks Greg :)

Managed to find one picture that has hints of it, one of Berts with his RH200 a few years back. Shows up in plain RGB but when narrowband is added is washes it out.



It kinda looks like the star is the rats deposit :lol:

Thanks Mike, was shot with the Sky Rover, the chip is just a tad larger than my minuscule micro 4/3 sensor which helps with the FOV. DSLR can be a lot of fun, point and shoot and it's done!

[cometcatcher]

That's a great Cat's paw Colin! With that wide field, if you had panned up and right a bit you would have captured the Lobster in the same frame.

As to the blue, my only pic of it that's wide-ish is from my 6" F5 I took back in 2015. There's a hint of blue in mine but knowing me I probably thought it was a gradient and processed it out. :rolleyes: So I'm not much help really.

[glend]

Very nice Colin. I like the blue but yeah with the Moon in play its probably a gradient. Still great detail.

[multiweb]

Cool colours in that field. Very well done. :thumbsup:

[Atmos]

I attempted to process it out with several passes of gradient removal, both as a RGB image and on individual colour channels.

I didn't do any framing, did nothing more than slew to NGC 6334 and push start on the invelometer and go to bed. Was two days before I even checked any frames haha



What does confuse me with it being a moon gradient is that the moon at set (shot between 2-3:30am on tuesday) and although it is brighter on the left than right, there is perfect blacks in the middle.



Thanks Marc, your wide fields get me thinking I need to do them more :)

[Retrograde]

Very nice Colin.

Interesting about the "blue" areas - I have a wide-field of the same area that I took at SPSP (which I will throw up when I get the chance) and it shows sections that I would probably describe as hazy or milky and are at quite a contrast to the very dark dust lanes and patches that can also be seen in your image. I'm thinking they're real and not a gradient. It's an area that doesn't seem to be imaged much at medium-wide focal lengths. There are quite a few images of the individual objects and plenty of really wide angle shots but not too many in between that I can find.

[atalas]

Collin,beautiful shot...well done:thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup:

I don't know If you spent any time composing but either way It's very well balanced and quite stunning.

Like Peter,I too think that It's natural, and part of the dynamics of that region at that scale....a few other examples can be seen around the region like M6 for one.

Anyway It's a top shot.

[strongmanmike]

Looks really nice Colin and I particularly like how you have managed to reveal what small amount of colour variation there is in this nebula :thumbsup: I assume since it was at the meridian there was no Moon up at the time?..so I'm thinking not a Moon gradient, it is not just on the left side but also in other dark areas of the image..so I'm inclined to say it is real, perhaps somewhat emphasised but still real :thumbsup:

Mike

[topheart]

That's a good one Colin!

Cheers,
Tim

[Stevec35]

Looks good to me Colin

Cheers

Steve

[RickS]

As everybody already said... a fine image, Colin!

How does the blue master look? If there are gradients they might be more obvious without the complication of the colour blend.

It's not the blue of a reflection nebula and looks like an unusual place to find Oiii.

Cheers,
Rick.

[Decimus]

:eyepop: Can't stop looking at this beautiful image, Colin. Superb!:thumbsup:
Cheers,
Richard

[Atmos]

I was recently thinking that I should get my D7200 and a 85mm lens onto this region for a few hours and see what it picks up. 9.5"/pixel isn't exactly high resolution but it'll give an idea on the entire complex :) Maybe 4-6 hours at F/2 will help :lol:



Composing, what's that? :lol: I think I may need to sneak away with the camera again next new moon and mosaic it a bit to get the Lobster nebula in there as well :) Might also be worth while being how far that blue stuff extends out.



I was really happy with the way it turned out, I'm saying its all camera :P 300s at ISO800 and the hourglass in M8 isn't blown out to all buggery.
The moon was up earlier but had set by the time I started this one. Started 1.6 hours before meridian and stopped when it got there. Would have kept going if I didn't have to pack up to go to work :P

I do think its real, whatever it is! There black areas surrounded by bits with this blue nebulosity and I haven't done any gradient removal, just Linear Clip stacked 19x300s.





Thanks :)



The blue channel doesn't look like it has any gradient. A strong background signal on the left side, less so on the right but nothing in the middle.

I do agree, it doesn't quite look like the right place for a reflection nebula (unless it is kinda like the Rho region) and doesn't have the right colour to be OIII.



Thanks Richard :)

[leon]

Nice job indeed i do love that one.

Leon

[willik]

You just keep getting better all the time great shot
Martin

[Atmos]

Thanks Leon, thinking of printing it. Although I should probably crop the corner of the Lobster out for that... Or just PS it out entirely and make it look like more space :P



Thanks Martin. I probably cannot take much credit though as all I do is push a few buttons and then go to sleep :lol: