Hi All,
This was another fill-in image while waiting for other targets to hit their prime imaging position. I know its had its fair share of 'show time' here, but I thought I'd post it anyway;
Celestial Snake (B72)
Located in the constellation Ophiuchus the remarkable dark nebula known as the Snake Nebula slithers its way through a sea of stars. The nebula is more formally referred to as Barnard 72 (B72). In the early 20th century, astronomer E. E. Barnard catalogued 182 dark markings around the center of our Milky Way galaxy. Barnard's nebulae consist of interstellar dark clouds of obscuring gas and dust, blocking light of stars behind. B72 resides approximately 650 light years away.
This image with its subtle and bold dust areas was rather interesting to process. Again, I pushed the a few sequences through PixInsight. HDRWaveletTransform is what made the difference with this image. I attempted to replicate the same effect in Photoshop, but couldn't completely match the output of the PI HDRWaveletTransform routine. I really like what it has done to the mid tones displaying a good balance between the shadows. I'll need to use this more often - a new world awaits! This is a straight RGB composite which I enjoy doing for bright fields such as this. It provides for a super rich colour with no need to juggle colour shifts in luminance data. It was layered a couple of times using the vibrance tool in PS. It was tempting to push the data more but found the contrast wash too severe. Feel free to check out the annotated version on the page for the other Barnard catalogued features.
Anyway, thanks for looking. All comments welcome.
