Seagulls head

[Paul Haese]

This is an image I have been collecting data for the last couple of months. It is of IC2177 or the Seagull nebula. My field of view does not encompass the entire nebula, in fact far from it, but it does give a close up view of the head and shoulders of the nebula.

The nebula contains mainly emission, but also dark and reflection nebulosity. The reflection nebulosity is my main interest here. There are faint wisps through the upper part of the image and these give a nice 3D look to the image.

The image contains 24.7 hours of data which includes L, Ha, OIII, SII and RGB. The OIII in the image is quite scant which only a small section to the lower right having a very slight amount of data there.

Click here (http://paulhaese.net/IC2177AG12.html) for larger image.

[Placidus]

I've always thought that the "seagull" is misnamed. The beak looks more like it's a cockatoo. And when you look closely, it's got big sharp teeth.


But ignoring dentition, it's a lovely, gentle, intriguing image. Well done!


In armchair ignorance, I suspect that when an image has lots of blue reflection nebulosity, but very scant OIII, some of what does get through the OIII filter may actually be the aqua end of the continuum reflection nebulosity. One way to tell is to put together an image with just the blue broadband filter mapped to blue, and the OIII mapped to say yellow, and see if they are co-located and highly correlated, or whether they are geographically separate.

[petershah]

That's great Paul....you have really shown the subtle reflection coning out of that area....you don't see that very often

[TrevorW]

Well done Paul nicely processed, the more data the better the quality, if only I had the time :)

[glend]

Wonderful image, as usual Paul. You really have the AG12 dialed in. Love that your still using Photoshop CS6, the old ways are sometimes the best ways.

[strongmanmike]

A different rendering style on this one Paul, smokey and gaseous, I like it :thumbsup: good to see a close up on this perennial favourite too :thumbsup:

I agree with Mike, deffo a Parrot

Mike

[Andy01]

Lovely gossamer like waves of nebulosity shimmering through this scene Paul.
I'm enjoying the delicate appearance that your processing has rendered here. :thumbsup:

[gregbradley]

A beautiful image Paul. A bit ghostly in places. Love the processing on this.

Greg.

[Peter Ward]

I think your processing has matured to a much more sophisticated level with this one Paul.

Really delightful preservation of star intensities, smoothness and colour.
This is no re-surfacing crass effort occasionally seen in other posts (not yours) ...they remind me of turds that won't flush :)

Your rendition has a touch of class to it.

Nice :thumbsup:

[multiweb]

+1 Really like the natural processing on this one. The colours are great. Some serious image scale and details in that shot as it's not really bright and there are heaps of little resolved stars in the background. One for the cool wall. :thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup:

[Paul Haese]

Thanks everyone for the comments.




Thanks Mike, I agree it does look like a cockatoo more than a seagull. I guess someone thought it was the best name for it as many across the planet could identify with seagull rather than cockatoo.



Thanks Glen. I am still wrangling with the other AG12. I have purchased another GPU corrector and awaiting delivery. Soon enough I will have that up and running too. The supplied correctors require too much fiddling and high frustration.

I have Pixinsight but really like the tools I learnt in PS6. The names in Pix are indecipherable to me. Besides I own PS6 and am not forced to rent the new versions. It is bizarre having to pay for Dreamweaver just to publish my images to my webpage.



Thanks Mike, I wrangled with the process on this one for sometime. It required a fair bit of blending to bring out certain features and bandwidths. Still not really 100% on it but in the end it was a compromise.



Thanks Marc. The image scale really resolves the head well in my opinion. So I needed to do something with the composition. Whilst I prefer the traditional way of composition with astro photographs (that being in the centre) I think in this instance it needed to be offset somewhat to show the lower right and give some idea where the image was looking.

[topheart]

Lovely image.
The bird certainly has a twinkle in the eye.
Cheers,
Tim