Gabriela Mistral SHO

[Benjamin]

Have acquired some new gear (EQ6-R and a Quattro 8") and have been testing it over the last few days or so on the Gabriela Mistral nebula. Very happy to get a whole narrowband image in 3 hours on one of the nights (20x180s subs of Ha, O3 and S2). Could be deeper of course and still sorting collimation (especially after the meridian flip).

https://www.astrobin.com/401175/0/

[Geoff45]

Now that is a *good* picture. I like the way you’ve highlighted the face in blue.

[Camelopardalis]

Beautiful Ben :thumbsup:

[multiweb]

+1 Beautiful field. Vibrant colours and nice details. :thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup:

[Andy01]

Looks good Ben - just reckon you could push the S2 colour a tad harder to make it more definitive - well done on the new kit! :thumbsup:

[Benjamin]

Thanks Geoff, Dunk, Marc and Andy. I found as I pushed the S2 more (getting more of that vibrant gold/orange rim say) the more I emphasized the colour in the clouds to the bottom left. My thought was to cut them loose perhaps and just keep Gabriela and the gems (sounds like a band name!). Was thinking of your wonderful talk in Brisbane recently Andy and your amazing pics when thinking about how on earth to frame this! How about this? Aligns the diffraction spikes...?

[ChrisV]

That's really nice Ben. The face had come up really well

[gregbradley]

Very nice.

Greg.

[Benjamin]

Thanks Greg and Chris. A new version is up on Astrobin https://www.astrobin.com/full/401175/B/ that uses only the Ha as luminance. I think the O3 (which suffered from some collimation issues) was muddying the waters when, for luminance, it was combined with the Ha and S2. The ‘purer’ Ha only data seems to let a little more of everything through.

[Placidus]

Either way it is an excellent Gabriela Mistral. The face looks positively three-dimensional.

[strongmanmike]

That's quite a nice shot of this very cool bit of nebula Ben, pretty strong orange colour but I like it :thumbsup:

Mike

[Benjamin]

Thanks Mike and Mike n Trish. I was thinking about deeper reds but it tended to skew a lot of the other colors (too much purple). Might try to colour mask and see what I get :-)