Pickerings Triangle

[joshman (Josh)]

Another capture from the phenomenal Cygnus Loop SNR; and my last imaging run on it this year. It's time to move onto other subjects, hopefully in less challenging parts of the sky.

I'm finding that my 102mm scope is a weird focal length to frame and especially isolate this particular structure nicely. Either way, I think I'll be approaching this entire region in a very different manner next year.

All up, this is just under 14 hours of integration, 45 minutes of RGB for the star colour, the rest is a roughly even split between Ha and OIII.

The equipment and capture particulars can be found on Astrobin, I highly recommend checking out the full resolution verison.

The processing went a little like this:
Stars:
LinearFit > ChannelCombination > SPCC > StarX > GHS to Stretch > CurvesTransformation to add some saturation.
NB:
LinearFit > mild BlurX (on non-stellar only) > StarX > GHS
PixelMath to combine into HOO
CurvesTransformation for colour adjustment
PixelMath to bring the stars in
Mild BlurX to reduce star size.
NoiseX

C&C Welcome!

Thanks for looking and Clear Skies!

[Andy01 (Andy)]

That’s a good looking piece of sky and an overall well presented image.
Once again though, it appears that the dynamic range has been overly compressed.

I’ve seen other versions of this that ‘pop’ more.
https://www.astrobin.com/xm1fcn/?q=&camera=

Might be worth revisiting the data, and broadening the histogram.
Lovely colours too, if a tad magenta biased

[joshman (Josh)]

Thanks Andy, as always you're right on the money.


I've gone back to the processing and had another run at it. I think I've managed to strike a better colour and contrast balance. I've attached a copy, but jpeg compression really doesn't do it justice.


I've uploaded it as a revision to my Astrobin as well.


I'm struggling with balancing the intensity of the Ha data with the OIII. I've found that a lot of the images online that really "Pop" severely down-play the Ha data to rely on the OIII to provide the punch. It's a difficult balance to get right.


I think i'm headed in the right direction, but it might still be a little magenta