IC 1284 & Friends in Sagittarius - (Reprocessed Version)

[Andy01]

Now that the Malin entries are in, it's time to visit something new.
This one was a major technical challenge for me to image. :)

Rendering natural star colours & blue reflection nebulosity from my light polluted location was hard! Credit due to Robert Colombari for his fine Apod image of M24 (https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap180629.html) which I referenced for a guide to the final colours.:thanx:

It’s an interesting mix of Ha rich emissions & blue Reflection nebulosity contrasted against a swirling region of intricate dark interstellar dust.

IC 1284 also known as Sharpless 37. Alongside IC 1284 are two blue reflection Nebulae vdB 118 and vdB 119.
There are dark nebulae in this region as well. The most significant is LDN 315.
This is a dark lane structure that goes top to bottom across the image.
It extends about 6 degrees of sky. VdB 119 is about 40 light years distant; vdB 118 is about 185 light years distant; IC 1284 is about 1,400 light years distant.

EDITED VERSION (https://www.astrobin.com/full/6lkfpw/B/) - Reprocessed with Less NR & better star colours :D

Taken from suburban light pollutionville, Melbourne, Australia.

[Placidus]

A very fine image of a refreshingly different target Andy. The intricate winding dust lanes catch the imagination.

[Peter Ward]

An eye-pleasing rendition of a less trodden path.
Nice one :thumbsup:

[Ryderscope]

Nice work Andy. I like this area. Looks like a blue eyed monster emerging from a cave :)

[multiweb]

The jimmy neutron nebula. :lol: Very nice colours and superb data. I reckon you should just back off the noise reduction a tad and keep some grain in the fullres. There are a lot of tiny stars in that shot that need to be preserved. :thumbsup:

[Andy01]

Cheers M&T :thumbsup: The Surf coast dust lane is sure interestingly shaped, wonder how that happened?



Thanks Peter :) I visited this area a few years ago but wasn't really happy with the colours. I've taken a leaf from your book and gathered a lot more data this time, which helps combat the LP here. :D



Cheers Rodney! Yes, agreed - or a little lightning bug perhaps? ;)



Merci Marc! Jimmy Neutron nebula, I like that! :D:atom:
I'll have another look at the data re: the NR. Salut! :cheers:

[Bart]

Very nice Andy, not something I have seen a lot of.

[gregbradley]

A pleasing image. The reflection nebula looks great. Not a lot of colour in the stars and too many all white stars though. Must be hard with light polluted subexposures. Perhaps more colour saturation on the stars layer?.

Greg.

[Andy01]

Cheers Bart - There's still plenty of rarely imaged targets up there for the adventurous imager



Thanks Greg, reckon that's about as good as it gets from the conditions here, this one would really pop under dark skies! :thumbsup:

[strongmanmike]

Excellent result from Melbourne skies Andy :clap: Hard to get optimal colour fidelity from heavily light polluted skies. Quite an intriguing bit of sky that and not imaged that often, you're right :question: I shot it many years ago in my early days of CCD'ing but have never gone back...should :thumbsup:

I'm with Marc though, might be worth easing off the noise reduction a tad..? :)

Mike

[Andy01]

Cheers Mike (& Marc) I've completely reprocessed this image. Beginning with the base RGB image, splitting it into seperate Colour & Lum layers (thanks for the reminder there Marcus) then gently adding back the Ha (lighten mode + Hue/sat) & Blue lum layers (Lighten mode + Hue/sat).
Baked with a gentle tough of carefully masked NR & tonal contrast. :D

Same Link as before. (https://www.astrobin.com/full/6lkfpw/B/)

[marc4darkskies]

I like this version a lot Andy - colours are much better and the composition is great! :thumbsup:

Yeah it's pretty noisy at full res, but I notice you didn't do any luminance. Any reason for that? If you did a few hours of luminance your ability to do noise management would improve significantly I think.

[Andy01]

Hey Marcus, thanks for that. :thumbsup:
Having achieved a reasonable LRGB result of M7 recently, I might reconsider shooting Lum from home again. I had previously just thought only HaRGB was possible here. :question:
Cheers :D

[strongmanmike]

You know?...the best thing about this image is...ITS NOT THE BLOODY FIGHTING DRAGONS! :scared::scared::scared::scared:

:rofl:

Sorry, juuuust joshin :P..I love NGC 6188 :rolleyes:...:)

As usual, when people post different versions of the same image...I'm in the camp of.. somewhere in between :doh: :lol:

Mike

[Andy01]

:rofl::rofl::rofl:
Yep, agreed!

Er, thanks for the incisive critique too. :thanx:
I used to be decisive, but now I’m not so sure :lol:

[Slawomir]

Very very nice image Andy :thumbsup: