M27 Dumbbell Nebula

[Dave882]

Frustratingly low in the sky and only just clearing my neighbours roof, this has been my late night / early morning target for the last few nights. Racked up quite a few hours but ASIAIR has a real problem platesolving long fl into the city skyglow so lost a HEAP of subs after the auto meridian flips. Anyways- still got about 10hrs with the l-extreme filter under the full moon.

C14 non edge @f7
EQ8 pro
Asi2600mc pro (L-extreme)
Asi290mm / celestron OAG
ASIAIR pro / APP / PS

Unfortunately I only have a 1.25” l-extreme which does not allow full illumination of the apsc sensor with my setup. Much cropping and stuffing around with processing to remove all the vignetting. Much cursing at the fact I was too cheap to pay the extra for a 2” filter a few years ago.

Quite tricky to process. Even the slightest push too hard on saturation or sharpening completely destroyed the beautiful appearance of cloudy Ha in a blue/green sea of O3. The wings are visible but reckon I need to double the integration to bring them out nicely without sacrificing the core of the PN.

Hope you enjoy it! Thanks for looking

[PKay]

Great work David, I like it.

Yes you are not alone in that Astrophotography can be a lot of stuffing around at times.

Perseverance and patience!

well done :thumbsup:

[Dave882]

Thanks Peter I appreciate the feedback. It’s quite a large PN and only just managed to fit it all in! I was quite uncertain how to present it as so many I see posted are much higher saturation and super stretched to bring out the outer region. I thought I’d just leave the colours as captured with the osc and used this beautiful image below from the Caelum Observatory as a bit of a processing guide.

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap050603.html

But each to their own. I’m looking forward to see what some others can present. Cheers