Skull and Crossbones Nebula (NGC2467)

[Doogs38]

Hooray for Xmas leave and being home with my gear! I celebrated by having a crack at the Skull and Crossbones Nebula (NGC2467) in Pupis. It's an active stellar nursery with plenty of Ha and despite appearances, it is (apparently) a collection of several celestial wonders along the same line of sight. It's a big target and fills the frame of my ASI294MC when using the 120ed hence the attached pic has been mangled by the forum's image compression; I've attached a link to the full size image. As always, thanks for looking. Alex

SW120ED x 0.85 Reducer/Flattener
92 x 240s (~6hrs 20 mins) Antlia Dual NB, ASI294MC
Darks, flats, dark flats. PI

Full size image here
https://pbase.com/doogs38/image/173249453

[Sunfish]

Great work. My favourite nebula. A commendable commitment to get that level of detail and colour in a difficult target.

[oska]

Fantastic result Alex, very well done!

[Dave882]

That’s a wonderful shot! Never tried this one thanks for sharing!

[Cyberman]

Great photo Alex. Can I ask you how and what you use to make your flats, Rob

[spacezebra]

:eyepop:

[Mickoid]

I agree with all the previous compliments Alex. You've done a great job on this one and it's not posted here very often so it's nice to see something a little different. I don't know where they get these names from because it hardly looks like a skull and cross bones to me. I see a grose looking dog with a bung eye staring at me. :lol:

[Doogs38]

Thanks for your encouragement Michael, Petra, John, Dave, Ray and Rob. I was looking for a good NB target and saw an impressive version of this on Astrobin. From my first sub I could see that the nebula had plenty of detail and colour; I think this will be a fave target too, Ray. I'm going to return to it soon with my EdgeHD 8" which is now ready for imaging (at f/10) ... might even make it the 'first light' target.

Rob, my flats production is very agricultural - I use an 11" iPad Pro and white tea-shirt :lol: The 'PS Align' iPad app has a full-screen white lighting function that I use with exposures controlled by Ekos to achieve a particular ADU. I normally use an ADU of 22000 and aim for an exposure length of ~5s with the UV/IR filter, and ~8s with the dual NB filter (... I adjust iPad brightness to vary exposure time). The resulting flats (and dark flats) seem to work ok. I'm going to need a bigger lighting panel for the EdgeHD 8"! Hope that makes sense. Alex

[Cyberman]

thanks for the help Alex. I use a DLSR canon 600D with 250 F4 quattro reflector and BYEOS, and a tracing light panel( with white T shirt and a sheet of thin white cardboard) for my flats. This seemed to work well but the last time I used it , it didn't remove one of my donuts. Would Ekos work ok with my DSLR, Rob

[Kevchu]

Great image Alex, Can I ask as to what program use for processing?
Kevin

[AstroViking]

Doogs, that's a great image. I've never that nebula before, so hat's off to widening our list of potential targets.



If you tilt your hear about 45 degrees to the left, so the "flat spot and orange ball" are horizontal, the the white blob at (what is now) top-left is the skull - the two dark circles are the eye sockets and the semi-rectangular black and white line are the teeth. The dark nebula bits to the lower-left is one of the cross-bones.

I saw that one straight away, but for the life of me cannot work out the 'running chicken' nebula... :shrug:

Cheers,
V

[Mickoid]

"If you tilt your hear about 45 degrees to the left, so the "flat spot and orange ball" are horizontal, the the white blob at (what is now) top-left is the skull - the two dark circles are the eye sockets and the semi-rectangular black and white line are the teeth. The dark nebula bits to the lower-left is one of the cross-bones."

Maybe after a few Christmas drinks I might be able to see it!

[Doogs38]

Thanks Steve. I’m the opposite, I can see the chicken but not (yet) the skull or crossbones … I’ll keep trying :)

[Doogs38]

Thanks Kev. I used Pixinsight 99% and this was my 3rd attempt at processing the data. The other two attempts looked too yellow so I went crazy with hues, curves and saturation to tease out the OIII and retain the lighting/colours around the bigger stars in the nursery. I reckon I spent ~7hrs (probably more) in PI - a lot of trial and error. I finished the image in Photoshop but only for some minor tweaks using tools that aren’t available in PI. I’m a complete newbie to PI but now know just enough to produce a basic image :lol:

Rob, I would suggest searching Google but I believe Ekos supports your (Canon?) DSLR. Ekos is part of a complete imaging software solution (I use Stellarmate - Linux-based - on a Raspsberry Pi 4 at the scope) and uses INDI drivers. INDI has drivers for just about everything. There’s a learning curve with setup and use but that’s same for NINA etc. However, once you’re through that, Ekos/Stellarmate is excellent IMHO but is likely just as frustrating as any other complete imaging solution - happy to chat by PM if you want more info. I’m about to start using an ASIAIR+ on my SCT and looking fwd to learning the differences between the two solutions.