M8 Lagoon Nebula under a Full Moon

[Startrek]

Took advantage of a clear night last week in Sydney town and imaged M8 under a full moon lit sky with my new rig
Conditions were poor to average with some residual smoke haze around from the recent back burning operations around the outskirts of Sydney plus some intermittent passing high cloud
Full Moon
Bortle 8
8” f5 Klaus Helmerich Carbon fibre Newt
EQ6-R pro mount
ZWO 2600MC cooled to -10C , Gain 100
Antlia ALPT Dualband 5nm filter
150 x 2 minute dithered subs
40 x Flats
60 x Bias
EQMOD and Ascom Stellarium
APT
PHD2 Multistar guiding ( 0.65 to 0.80 ) guiding fell away later into the night
Stacked in Deep Sky Stacker
Processed in Startools v 1.8
Data set loaded via Compose using the Bicolour preset
In the Colour module I used SHO mapping vis presets in the Matrix

Synthetic Luminance version
A few OSC Bi colour SHO versions using the Matrix ( the Andy Warhol of OSC narrowband Bicolor imaging )

Astrobin link below for full resolution…..

https://www.astrobin.com/jmd0zn/

Comments welcome

Thanks

Martin

[petershah]

a great result especially with the LP challenges...The first rendition gets my vote...lovely work

[Dave882]

That’s beautiful Martin. Great control of the bright core and fantastic detail. It’s so incredible the tech these days that we can shoot targets like this, from the city in a full moon, and come up with a result like this. Great work!

[Startrek]

Thanks Peter
Appreciate the comment

[Startrek]

Thanks Dave,
Very happy how this one processed
Conditions were not good at all
I dropped back to 2 minute subs on this bigger and brighter target compared to using 3 minute subs on M17 the week before. From the data I found this to be a better choice and didn’t lose to much fine detail , definitely less gradient too.
On the camera side of things I’ve gone back to the Ascom preset of Gain 100 instead of a manual setting of Gain 101. I’m not sure if Gain 101 picks up the HGC that ZWO designed into the camera for high DR and low read noise. I guess we just have to trust them on this one. I only changed to Gain 101 as I read a post on CN from a guy who didn’t trust ZWO and decided to bump the gain up a notch to 101 or 102.

Cheers
Martin

[Ryderscope]

A great composition Martin and you’ve managed to contain the dynamic range well. The version on Astrobin is tops :thumbsup:

[Startrek]

Thanks Rodney
Startools is a joy to use
Some folk have trouble using the colour module and find it restrictive , I personally don’t. When I start Mono imaging in a month or two , the ST colour module will be definitely put to the test , in particular narrowband.
Cheers
Martin