Thread: Chalice Nebula
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Old 07-01-2016, 07:26 AM
Placidus (Mike and Trish)
Narrowing the band

Placidus is offline
 
Join Date: Mar 2011
Location: Euchareena, NSW
Posts: 3,719
Chalice Nebula

The Chalice Nebula, Henize 206, in the Large Magellanic Cloud, over two recent rare and miraculously clear but moonlit nights.

Big one here.

Looks much more like a jewel filled Grail than say Aquarius looks like a water carrier.

Hubble palette: Red SII, Green H-alpha, Blue OIII, 4 hours each with 3nM filters. Aspen CG16M at -30C unbinned, on 20" PlaneWave. 1-hour subs. Field about 30 min arc, 0.55 sec arc/pixel.

Notice the wonderful supernova remnant looking like a crinkly doughnut in front of the left hand edge of the base of the Chalice. The SNR is comparatively strong in SII (red), indicating stellar innards).

Processed entirely in my very own GoodLook 64 free to a good home if you do this sort of image and if you send me an email.

Some wavelet sharpening at the very end. To make the generally weak SII more obvious without ending up with a billion red micro-stars, I prepared two versions: one with the red pushed hard, the other more straight up. I then used a mask based on regional brightness to combine the two versions, holding the red back in the dark suburbs.

Cheers,
Mike (processing)
Trish (scope operator)
Attached Thumbnails
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Last edited by Placidus; 07-01-2016 at 08:39 AM. Reason: Brighter
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