[Paul Haese]

Thanks Geoff and Rex for your comments.

Originally Posted by Placidus

Very fine indeed, Paul. The finest details in the inner nebula are nailed, and the outer OIII shell is very nicely and cleanly shown.

Trish and I spent quite some time comparing your shot with ours at high magnification. Quite different colours of course, different filters, different gear, and very different emphasis, but it was amazing the extent to which we agree on the tiniest of details. As an ex-scientist, I find that reassuring. Neither of us is making this stuff up.

Best,
M&T

Thanks Trish and Mike. It is a tough object to get clean and looking "right". When I say "right" I mean from a subjective perspective. I can see why Rick did 70 hours on this object when he did it. The noise levels were hard to eliminate in the OIII, but I got to a point where I just did not want to spend anymore time with the integration. Plus the guide star I selected makes it hard to use with the AOX. Now that I have fitted the AOX I want to start utilising it for each image. This is the last image where I will use traditional guiding.

I was very careful about the level of sharpening I used on the core nebula. As you would see it could be easy to over sharpen it and give an odd over cooked look to it. There are some tiny tendrils that I really like in the core as a result of this approach. Some interesting shadows being cast too. It's easy to push the processing so artefacts appear and then one can assume those are real.

Thanks once again for your detailed comments.

Originally Posted by jase

A nice addition Paul. It was good to blink the original and revised images. The stars really perk up the image which make it an even more pleasing view. Good stuff!

Thanks Jase I appreciate you taking the time to comment . I thought it would be pertinent to have a blink comparison of the two images. The changes are quite subtle I suppose but fairly visible once you do a blink comparison. There is some detail in the back ground that shows up with the addition of the RGB set. In any event it is nice to finally have this image done..... For now!