A popular target this time of year, the nebula IC2177 soars like a huge magenta bird just south of the celestial equator on the boarder between the constellations of Canis Major and Monoceros. Like The Orion nebula, to me at least, this object never seems to look that good in narrowband
...so I used narrow band emission line data to augment a natural true colour SIIHaOIIIRGB image...quite happy with the result in the end.
I wanted to frame it so it really looked like it was soaring like a bird.
As is the case all the time these days, the data collection went without a hitch with perfect guiding, as good as +/- 0.15
arc sec for extended periods
and not one sub chucked
The Seagull Nebula (click on image to enlarge)
If you want to soar around a larger version go
HERE
For the old fashioned purists..
HERE is the full size full res Ha only version, with only DDP and log stretch applied, nothing else
Here is an
Annotated Version (courtesy of the venerable Sakib Rasool - he has a thing for making things North up
) to identify all the good bits.
Cheers
Mike