Helix in bicolour

[Paul Haese]

Another project I have been whittling away at for the last month or so is the Helix nebula in bi colour. I chose to use just the two narrow band images based on some advice from Martin Pugh. There is little if any SII data to be had and the noise was very high so in the end I abandoned the SII to data.

I went with the Hubble colour pallette, which mainly focuses on the Ha data over the OIII; although it can be seen within the rings of expelled gas.

If I will try to collect more data if time permits, just to give a better signal to noise ratio.

Click here (http://paulhaese.net/NGC7293.html)for larger image.

Critique welcome.

[Larryp]

Wow!:thumbsup:

[OzRob]

That's looking good. I collected some data of this last month. I should get it processed.

[CoolhandJo]

great work

[PRejto]

Paul, I'm very impressed by this image....very detailed and great capture of the fainter nebulosities. I'm curious about your subframe durations and total stack times if you don't mind sharing. Thanks.

Peter

[strongmanmike]

That looks quite nice Paul, the colours work well.

The outer stuff is pretty faint huh? ;)

Mike

[tilbrook@rbe.ne]

Hi Paul,

Quite like the colour, I tried some 15 minute exposures the other night on the Helix, Didn't gain anything over 8 minute exposures. Still difficult to bring out the outer loop though.

Just shows that a proper CCD with filters is better than an unmoodded DSLR on this object.

Cheers,

Justin.

[Paul Haese]

Thanks all, much appreciated.



Peter my sub frame duration is 10 minutes and the total stack is 150 each colour. So five hours of data. On my website the details are listed below the image.



Yes the outer stuff is really faint. On the Ha data I can see the two inner lobes but the lobes outside of that (like in Martin's image) are just not there yet. More time which I don't have now.

[Paul Haese]

Justin you will find it tough to get much with a unmodded DSLR. The band passes are too narrow for the filter you have on the camera on its own. There are special filters though that clip into a DSLR will will help.

[Stevec35]

Nice Helix Paul. I think the colours are just right.

Cheers

Steve

[RickS]

Yes, great colours, Paul, and a lot of the very faint stuff is visible!

[multiweb]

Love the colours. Very smooth. :thumbsup:

[stardust steve]

Really pops out at you:eyepop:
Looking good.

[Martin Pugh]

Nicely done Paul. Colour works very well.

cheers
Martin

[dvj]

Electric!

[Paul Haese]

Thanks guys, it definitely needs more time to get the noise out and bring the detail up. With any luck I can get this in the next two weeks.

[SkyViking]

That's stunning, I really like the colours too. The outer stuff sure is faint!

[TheDecepticon]

Very nice, Paul, colour is very nice. :)

[Cosmic]

Awesome work :thumbsup:

[DavidNg]

Nice work, I guess most of us will never get this far. Well done.

[TrevorW]

Nice one Paul, although background appears overly dark IMO and some star elongation

[Paul Haese]

Thanks guys for the comments.




Looking at the image during the day will present as being dark, at night it looks quite light. As to star elongation that, there is non. In the full res version the stars are quite round. Not sure where you are seeing this.

[TrevorW]

Must be my eyes then ? as I checked the large image and it appeared although slight to me in both top left but moreso bottom left stars :confused2:

[strongmanmike]

If you are seeing star elongation Trevor, perhaps your eyes suffer from astigmatism? This will tend to elongate tiny dots, try looking very closely at the screen and enlarge the image, do you still see any elongation..? Any elongation I can see (and I can't really) is trivial and minuscule :shrug:

Mike

[tilbrook@rbe.ne]

Mikes right, I suffer from astigmatism and see exactly what Mike describes.
I have to check very carefully to be sure of my star images.

Cheers,

Justin.

[Paul Haese]

Just to satisfy my own curiosity I have included the top left and bottom left stars in the image at full resolution. I think they look pretty close to round to me, with ever so slight out of round defects; which is most likely a stacking, scaling issue or even focus being just slightly out. The original image I presented is at around 85%, so seeing any defects would be very hard to see if not impossible.

[TrevorW]

I do suffer from an astigmatism so obviously it is my eyes (very short sighted old cranky and fart a lot too)

Sorry :D

Keep my mouth shut in future :thumbsup: