Wikipedia calls this The Banana nebula!

[MarkInSpace]

NGC 3199
Yikes - Wikipedia calls this The Banana nebula! I don't think I've ever heard that name!!
I need some help with managing star reduction, but otherwise pleased with the image.
60 x 120 s
L-extreme filter
SkyRover 115
HEQ5-pro
Pixinsight + Photoshop

[astroron]

I have always known it as the banana Nebula
in my 35 years in Astronomy.
Visually it is more reminiscent of a banana
than images, as more nebulosity is seen
in pictures.
Cheers:thumbsup:

[Placidus]

Good work!

Generally, shrinking stars as a goal in itself is a bad idea. Deconvolution, with the goal of improving detail everywhere, is a good idea, if applied with subtlety and skill, but it is easy to overdo it.

Best,
Mike

[MarkInSpace]

Thanks for the input, Mike.
There are So many stars in the original image, you can barely see the nebula!
I thought the l-extreme would help with that problem. Hmm
For sure, I need a better way to manage the stars properly. I'm using a photoshop approach where I Select/Expand/Feather then Minimise.
That seems to work "OK", but leaves artifacts.
Any ideas?

[multiweb]

I second Mike's comments regarding the stars. Your stellar profiles will give you an indication of what details you can expect in your nebulosity. Have a good look at the high res Seagull RGB shot in the deep sky and have a peek at the very faint smaller stars. In your case you're using an OSC with a bayer matrix. Given your image scale due to your aperture and FL you would benefit from dithering your subs during data capture and use a program that uses drizzle integration. PixInsight does bayer drizzlimg. DSS, Maxim DL do drizzle combine. This will reduce your stars by effectively doubling your resolution as if you were using a mono camera of the same pixel size. Give that a go and you'll see an improvement.

[MarkInSpace]

Thanks for the suggestion, Marc.
I’ll give this a go and post back.
Cheers
Mark

[multiweb]

I do it routinely with my FSQ106N. It works really well and also helps with noise. You need a lot of subs though. So if you usually do 10min subs, do 5min subs and double the amount to keep the same integration time. From experience 20+ subs is good for drizzling. 40 or 50 better. The added advantage of more subs is you can also pick and choose and if anything goes wrong during capture (cloud or tracking) you've only lost 5min.

[MarkInSpace]

Hi Marc
What distance do you recommend for dithering? APT (what I use) offers between 0.5 and 5 guide camera pixels.
Cheers

[multiweb]

Try 5px or 10px (on your imaging camera) to start with. It doesn't have to be exact. The more the better. If you don't dither enough or have not enough subs you'll see grid artefacts in your stacked image. If this happens increase the number of subs and dither offsets and it'll go away.