Dragon Heart

[Doogs38 (Alex)]

Mono pic #2. This one is in close to the heart of NGC6188 Fighting Dragons - the EdgeHD captured lots of detail. It’s SHO with ~10hrs total integration but will be collecting more Oiii. I tried to give this image a darker look and make the dust/gas clouds look like rain clouds on an overcast day without drowning the background in Oiii blue-green. I'm happy with where this image is heading and thought I'd share it with you. Cheers, Alex

EdgeHD 8" with 0.7 R, ASI294MM, Optolong SHO
S: 75 x 180s
H: 76 x 180s
O: 53 x 180s
Stacked in APP, edited in PI, finished in PS.

Oh, tweaking the SCT's collimation was painful but worthwhile.

[xelasnave]

Jaw dropping magnificence of unparalleled splendor Alex.
beautiful

Alex

[AstroViking (Steve)]

<Voice="Darth Vader">
Impressive!
</Voice>

There's a truckload of detail in that image, Alex. The more you look, the more you find. Oh, and a suitably dark and sombre palette for a cold winter's day, too!

Cheers,
V

[oska (John)]

Fantastic. Tweaked? you've got it singing! The detail is already wonderful and an awesome palette. You're a natural mate.

[Bodon (Steve)]

Wow very nice!

[Dave882 (David)]

Fantastic! Love the subtle detail up top of the pic and the contrast is spot on imho.

[zubinelgenubi (Adam)]

Beautiful image!

[carlstronomy (Carl)]

Absolute cracker Alex, very impressive image

Is that image at F10 on the SCT or did you use a 6.3 reducer?

Yes tweaking the collimation on these beasts can make such a huge difference.

Clear skies

[Doogs38 (Alex)]

Thanks for the feedback everyone! I wasn’t sure what to expect but I think I’m going to enjoy the whole mono thing. It is more work than OSC but it is also provides an insane amount of flexibility.

Originally Posted by xelasnave

Jaw dropping magnificence of unparalleled splendor Alex. beautiful

Why thank you, Alex, for your abundantly munificent feedback.

Originally Posted by AstroViking

<Voice="Darth Vader">
Impressive!
</Voice>

Lolz, thanks Steve.

Originally Posted by oska

Fantastic. Tweaked? you've got it singing! The detail is already wonderful and an awesome palette. You're a natural mate.

Hey Dude - thanks. Actually, it didn’t require too much tweaking. I tried SHO, HOO and RBGSHO and they all looked roughly the same in linear form. My tweaking was mainly around contrast, saturation and some noise reduction (NoiseX) and deconv (BlurX). I use PS for final sharpening; I’ve started use a PS plug-in called APF-R but only very lightly and not on all images as it’s a bit hit and miss. And, strangely, StarNet2 worked (much) better at removing stars than StarX ... that was a first for me.

Thanks Steve, Dave and Adam.

Originally Posted by carlstronomy

Absolute cracker Alex, very impressive image Is that image at F10 on the SCT or did you use a 6.3 reducer?

Thanks Carl. This was done at F7 (1490mm) using the Celestron 0.7 reducer designed specifically for EdgeHD SCTs. The 6.3 reducer is not recommended. But I reckon I could give it a go using the EdgeHD’s native F10 as guiding with the ASIAIR (and OAG) has been excellent … mostly below 0.5 and quite often done around 0.3