Cygnet and Swan Ha OIII

[Placidus]

Probably pushing the boundaries of the MPU (Minimum Publishable Unit) here.

We've added 7 hours of 2x2 binned OIII (mapped to a quasi-natural cyan) to our recent 7 hours of unbinned H-alpha.

Full size image here (https://photos.smugmug.com/Category/Star-Forming-Regions/i-8rkXJgw/0/de3a5dc7/O/D%20Cygnet%20and%20Swan%20Red%20Ha% 207hrs%201x1%20Cyan%20OIII%207%20hr s%202x2.jpg)

M17 (mother swan) intrudes brightly into the bottom right corner.

The Cygnet, newly hatched and with scrawny wet feathers, occupying most of the frame, is unmistakeable. A head, turned to our right, showing very swan-like face, eye, upper and lower beak, slightly open. A very long and scruffy neck stretched upward so as to look for mum or enemies. The wing on our left is particularly anatomically accurate, with descending radius, then rising ulna-humerus, then the very long phalanges supporting the feathers. There are even some dark legs dangling down - rather too many legs unfortunately.

The OIII was sufficiently faint to warrant 2x2 binning. It seems to have worked without much loss of resolution, because 2x2 we were only just barely undersampled at 1.1 sec arc/pixel and 1.9 sec arc seeing.

Colourblind Mike struggles with this quasi-natural palette, because it looks monochrome to him. We therefore live in hope of a couple nights of SII and Hubble palette.

Both the Ha and the OIII are stretched and curved exactly the same way (arcsinh curve with slope at origin of 100) so we've not anticipated much problem with cyan rings around the stars, and left them alone. Mike can't see them anyway. :D

Best,
MnT

[Slawomir]

Very nice, eye-pleasing and soul-calming image of a magnificent DSO.

I also thought of imaging OIII and SII in bin2x2, but in the end decided to stick with 1x1 and combine all three channels into a super-luminance.

Looking forward to the tri-colour edition of the swan and its cygnet.

[Ryderscope]

The cygnet looks all fluffy and comfortable in mum's embrace. Nicely done.

[Placidus]

Thanks again, Suavi, that's kind and very encouraging.

When we were doing the outer chevrons of the Helix, the 2x2 binning found stuff in say 10 hours that 50+ hours of unbinned had failed to find. We think it can be useful, but it does usually mean a detectable loss of sharpness.

Soul-calming could be very useful right now, with fencers and plumbers and earth-movers, not to mention car roo damage repairers all hard at work, and sending bills.



Thanks Rodney! :hi:

Best,
MnT

[cometcatcher]

I like that palette combination. If I ever get a mono can I would probably be happy with HO Bicolour of some sort.

[Peter Ward]

I'd like to see some more colour nuance via some SII. That said, what a great result. :thumbsup:

[Placidus]

We resisted the gold and blue. Mono cameras are very useful for NB.



Thanks Peter. Just about full on new moon here, but solid cloud.

[codemonkey]

I think I prefer the bi-colour one here actually. Very nice, guys!

[Placidus]

Thanks, Lee. It does look less strident.