Corona Australis dust cloud

[kosborn]

This is image was inspired by a NASA APOD from 2018 (https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap181129.html). My version was taken over many moonless nights through late July and early August as a 3 panel mosaic with 6 hours of subs per panel at 2 minutes exposure per sub. I used a Starizona Apex ED reducer on the Esprit 100ED to give me a relatively fast focal ratio of f/3.57 (after I finally got the spacing right!). My result isn't as good as the APOD I emulated but I'm not unhappy with the result.

A bigger version is on Astrobin at https://www.astrobin.com/k1c40y/

Kevin

[Retrograde]

Great work Kevin - really nice!

Great depth in the fainter extensions. :thumbsup:

[Andy01]

Overall looks great! :thumbsup:

But if I put on my nitpicking glasses, the highlights of the cluster are blown out, along with highlight detail in the reflection nebula. :question:

Attend to these and you've got a big winner on your hands! :D

[Peter Ward]

Really nice, :thumbsup: but Ditto AC's comments

[kosborn]

Thanks Andy, good point. I was focused on bringing out the dust and wasn't watching what was happening to the highlights. It's difficult to bring out the dust without blowing out the brighter parts. Here is a second revision (also uploaded to astrobin (https://www.astrobin.com/k1c40y/B/) for pixel peeping). Unfortunately the dust doesn't pop as much. Thoughts anyone?

[mswhin63]

Excellent image, it also confirms the colour profile I have been looking for as well. I have been struggling to find a reference that shows the brownish ting to the dust layer and it appears the SiriL Photometric colour module works great, were as Startools tries to change it. Excellent image once again.

[Andy01]

Much improved, but those highlights are still gone. :sadeyes:
Can you not mask the highlights in the original stretch or re-stretch again, but less & simply layer the highlight details back in? :question:

[kosborn]

Thanks Malcolm,


I use Pixinsight for processing and in particular "Photometric Color Calibration" to try to get the colours right. It seems to work well.

[kosborn]

Thanks Andy. It took me ages to process and I probably should re-do it right from the beginning but if I'm going to start from scratch all over again that will probably have to wait until next weekend. I use PixInsight exclusively but when it comes to layering Photoshop would be better, especially for this image.

[strongmanmike]

For me this is an excellent image Kevin, well balanced, believable, natural looking and just an all-round "Yeah..that's a great shot" image. The time and considerable effort and dedication shown to collect and put it all together was well worth it and a class image of one of the skies most glorious areas was the result :thumbsup:

Mike

[kosborn]

Thanks Mike, I appreciate the comment!

[multiweb]

I really like that widefield. :thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup:
It's quite a lot of faint stuff you've captured in that massive fov and the colors and balance are spot on IMHO. Sure the reflection neb and cluster are bright but that's the way it is. That brown dust is super faint so in the context of a widefield who cares. :shrug:

[kosborn]

Thanks Marc,

I didn't expect to be able to catch that much dust from my backyard. I thought I'd need to go to a dark site but I'm pleased with how it turned out.

[petershah]

wow....beautiful..... I'm hoping to image this one day

[Spookyer]

Excellent work

[kosborn]

Thank you both. It sounds like you'll need to organise a trip south Peter. ;)

[vlazg]

Fantastic image of a fantastic area, as Marc said within the context of the image as a whole, it works. :thumbsup:

[Paul Haese]

Superb image, huge scale, great colour and well resolved dust. Composition is excellent too. I really like this.

[Ryderscope]

Excellent result Kevin. A dynamic field worth exploring and revisiting.

[kosborn]

Thank you all. I'm really pleased with the way it turned out. I can't take credit for the composition though because I took inspiration from an old APOD (https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap181129.html) which is worth checking out.

[matlud]

Great image Kevin, always nice to see the full scale of the dust clouds and well worth the time put into the mosaic.