Ngc 6726

[Cosmic]

Morning fellow night owls.

I captured the Corona Australis Molecular Cloud (NGC 6729 NGC 6726–7 + IC 4812) from the beautiful Darwin skies. Not sure if I processed it to its full potential, but we know that story and I'm always learning with pixinsight. Seems a little washed out, but all and in all I'm happy with result. What tough object to process, probably needs 10 hours I think.

Newton 10 inch 4.7
NEQ6 std about .9 total rms guiding
ASI 1600mm capturing 120 sec across LRGB 2hrs here.
Std ASI filters.

My sky:
SQM 21.87 mag./arc sec2
Brightness 0.194 mcd/m2
Artif. bright. 22.4 μcd/m2
Ratio 0.131
Bortle class 3
Elevation 48 meters

Thank you for looking

[vlazg]

Hi Daniel, good to see you're back. A great area and nicely done but i agree it is a bit muted and the stars are a bit wonky. What was your processing steps in Pix?
Skies are ok at the moment but i'm really starting to loathe smoke.

George

[Cosmic]

Thanks George, I have been lucky with the smoke.(touch wood :P ) I know tracking is somewhat below average, the eq6 is about 12 years old now unopened. I'm either going to do the Rowan belt mod and Zero Backlash Worm Mount replacement or.....just get a EQ8 and be done with it. I cant get any better than .8 rms on guiding and that's only for a short duration. Probably a lot to be gained here as you said the stars are somewhat getting away from me haha. painful :shrug: but that's all I have to work with atm even after adjusting the RA/DEC gearing.

Pixinisight process:

DSS:
Stack and align, best 80% of subs.
Mainly because I'm familiar with this process.

Pix:
Star align
LRGB Combination (RGB combine)
DBE on rgb and the lum
Colour Calibration rgb
Histogram Transformation rgb+lum same level
HDR Multiscale Transform
LRGB Combination (adding lum to rgb)
Basic Colour saturation
Histogram Transformation and maybe curves.

That's my work flow to date. I'm guessing there is more I can do but when the stars are the shape they are I don't think venturing any further will help :lol: Be good to get some direction on refinement, but I think most if it falls back on the guiding and mount respectively.

Current imaging chain recommends a good mount and tracking.

The ideal pixel size for OK Seeing (2-4" FWHM) seeing is: 0.67 - 2" / pixel.
This combination leads to slight over-sampling. Will require a good mount and careful guiding.

Cheers,
Dan