M17

[Benjamin]

A very short integration M17. Wanted to see what I could get in 4 hours from a roughly Bortle 6/7 sky with my 8” f4 Newt. Was a little cloudy and windy so got 2.75 hours all up. Processed in PixInsight, where I decided to strip the green out of the image (meaning Ha became a kind of yellow/orange, against the OIII Blue and SII Red). Stars are narrowband coloured too but removed the magenta by inverting the image and removing the green (the inverse of magenta).
Scope: Skywatcher 8” F4 Newtonian
Camera: ZWO ASI1600MM-Pro (gain 200, -10°)
Mount: Skywatcher EQ6-R
Ha 5nm 22x180s, [OIII] 3nm 17x180s, [SII] 3nm 16x180s

More details and larger image here: https://www.astrobin.com/full/pkl3hj/0/

[Andy01]

Interesting techniques used there Ben. :)
Whatever you did appears to have worked pretty well. :thumbsup:

If you can capture a decently long data set & do it over again, I'm sure you'll have an even better if not terrific result on your hands! :D

[Benjamin]

Cheers Andy. A longer data set is of certainly the goal. I was only hoping to get the image framed on Saturday and maybe see if some tilt had been corrected but was lucky enough to get some gaps between the clouds and the wind died down just enough. The biggest battle is returning to work now (after holidays) and being awake enough to image! Anyway, fingers crossed :D

[strongmanmike]

That's a very nice looking Swan Ben :thumbsup:

Mike

[Benjamin]

Cheers Mike :cheers:

[strongmanmike]

I was looking at this baby through my 12" Dob up at Eagleview two weeks ago and it was spectacular, so much detail and texture was visible in the dark transparent skies...but alas, no colour :sadeyes:

Mike

[Benjamin]

Oh, that would be awesome. My Dob doesn’t get enough love! The core of M17 is so bright and I used to love slewing manually between the lagoon, M16 and M17; all those rich star fields between

[gregbradley]

That's a fabulous Swan Ben. Love the blue colours you got.

Is this processed in Pixinsight or Photoshop or something else?

Greg.

[astronobob]

I'l 2nd all other opinions, them colours work very well indeed, beauty of a rendition :thumbsup:

[Benjamin]

Thanks Greg. Processed in PixInsight only. I don’t use half the features but have developed a a few work flows that seem to be successful and allow for a bit of creativity in regard to colour. I also have some faith that processes like Deconvolution use a rationale that respects the integrity of the images captured in some way :-)

[Benjamin]

Thanks Bob :-)

[cometcatcher]

Wow, stunning! I like the colours.

[Benjamin]

Thanks Kevin. Trying to get a bit more data tonight to see what else I can get out of it all. Have a feeling a dark sky would be a little more useful but a clear night when I’m home seems rare lately.