NGC 6188 The Fighting Dragons of Ara with Dragon's Egg

[CoolhandJo]

This is the fighting dragons of Ara in SHO and it's Dragon Egg!. Its 37.5hrs using L-ultimate and Antlia 3nm Sii pro filters. Taken with 533mcpro through Askar V at 495mm FL (f6.18). Processed in Pixinsight by separating channels and adding the Sii in equal parts. I am hppay with the 3nm Sii filter paired with the L ulimate 3nm Duo channels. Bortle 4/5

Astrobin high res https://astrob.in/zqzmbw/0/

[Bodon]

Paul nice detail in there!

[Nikolas]

Great detail there Paul, can you tell us more about the Sii integration?

[CoolhandJo]

Hi Nik
OSC with 3nm duo does a really great job on the Oii and Ha Channels - but as you know zero sii can be extracted.

I blend G and B channels to get the Oiii in pixelmath

For Sii I used to use a 7nm filter but upgraded to 3nm (Antlia pro). I used to take half of the integration that i took n duo for Sii but this time I actually took more Sii integration time as I find with OSC Sii is noisy as its using small fraction of the pixel due to bayer matrix.

The result is great - but the trade off is loads of integration time.

False Sii creation via pixinsight programs to a fantastic job to be honest and for some targets no additional Sii is required.

For this target I tried both false Sii and this true Sii. due to where the Sii lies in this target the true Sii brought out loads more fine detail in the image.

Im now deciding whether an upgrade to mono is worth it? Obviously it wil lsave laods of integration time but I actually leave my rig out all night so integration time doest bother me at the moment.

[CoolhandJo]

Thanks Steve

[CoolhandJo]

Thanks to Jon I noticed my stars were actually not right!

fixed here https://astrob.in/zqzmbw/C/

[TrevorW]

Very nice like the colour choice :)

[Startrek]

Many nights hard work have paid off with an excellent image of a difficult target
Colour palette , tone and contrast is pleasing
Well done !!
Martin

[Dave882]

Nice work Paul some great detail there and framed well to get the egg in there. Regarding ngc6164 (the egg) there’s good detail and very well-resolved depth in those outer shells. Colour pallet overall is pleasing but I’m not really sold on the centre of the ‘egg’ being blue/purple but that’s just personal I guess. Perhaps just double check your star alignment /recombination as I noticed the central star of ngc6164 is not in its normal spot :)

[CoolhandJo]

Dave

yes In the link below I uploaded the correct star field as I forgot to rotate it LOL.

yes the purple :question: I also was perplexed by that. Seems the OSC and Sii combination produced this and without the purple there was no colour variation at all so i left it in. Ideally I should of masked the Egg and re did the pallett from scratch