Hi All,
Having enjoyed imaging the Snake Nebula (B72) recently, I thought I'd have a go at acquiring data on a nearby starfield. The Pipe Nebula has been a well seasoned target for many so its hard to bring something different to a common scene. Anyway, here's my rendition;
LDN 1773 - Pipe Nebula
The Pipe Nebula (aka LDN 1773, Barnard 59,65-67 and 78) as its name implies is a smoking pipe shaped dark nebula located in the constellation Ophiuchus (the Serpent Bearer). This cloud of gas and dust spans a large area of the sky and forms the hind quarters of the Dark Horse Nebula, an even larger dark nebula complex. The stem of the pipe comprises of catalogue items B59, B65-67, with the pipe bowl as B78. The nebula’s opaque clouds absorb and block the starlight of the background Milky Way stars.
Still trying to catch up on processing previously acquired data. This one was acquired back in August. I went for a traditional RGB for this image as I've always enjoyed the rich star colours that this composition delivers. Also being a relatively bright area, its possible to get away with not acquiring luminance. incorporated basic PI routines into more familar flows such as DBE, HDRWavelets to bring out the super faint dust structure, but most of the work was still done in CCDStack and Photoshop. Calculated framing, the FSQ/U16M FoV isn't large enough so two panels were required. Very little effort was needed to match the two panels. What I do enjoy with the image is the contrasting hues of the milky way scaning from top to bottom. Bright stars at the top unobscured by dust which progressively alters towards the bottom of the image.
Thanks in advance for check the image out.
Ps. For those interested, there is now an annotated version of the
Octans Nebulae available on the image page.