Deep diving for a close up of the Lagoon

[Greg Bock (Greg Bock)]

Hi Guys,
first time for everything i guess?
I haven't posted any colour pics onto IIS before, because I'm never really happy with them, and I'm usually too busy imaging galaxies and searching for supernova. However, I took a break from SN searching recently to get a close in image of the details of the Lagoon. (As it turned out, this was a bad idea as Peter Marples found his 5th supernova while I was in the middle of my imaging session to get M8!!)

The reason for imaging this well known area was to reveal the intricate details in the complex area around the Hourglass region (upper right) while retaining the delicate colour differences beween the gaseous filaments surrounding it, as well as the colour differences between the young cluster NGC6530 and the background stars. I also wanted to capture the structure of the 'Great Wall' at lower left at the same time.

A bright moon was near it over the 2 nights i captured the subframes, so contrast could be improved. Seeing was average both nights, so resolution could be also be improved.

Details are:
Meade LX200R, 14" using an Optec F7 focal reducer on a Losmandy G11, SBIG ST2000XM, binned 1x1, and about 50 x 1 minute subframes per colour for Ha, red, green, and blue.
More processing details and an example of a raw Ha are at posting 10 below.

Comments welcome.

[Octane (Humayun)]

Like an oil painting.

Me thinks you should do more of this. Swing her over to M20 and show us what ya got!

H

[Ross G]

Great photo Greg.

Nice closeup with excellent detail.

Ross.

[rogerg (Roger)]

Nice round and suitably sharp stars, good red colour.

[strongmanmike (Michael)]

Sen-bluddy-sasional Bocky - one of the best close ups of that bit I have seen

Mike

[iceman (Mike)]

Beautiful and sharp, and smooth!

[multiweb (Marc)]

Very smooth.

[Paul Haese]

3 Dimensional looks and needs just a little more data to bring out that faint structure on the lower right. Guiding is superb and colour balance looks quite nice to me. Keep it up Greg.

[RickC (Richard)]

I agree very smooth and good colour and detail

Richard

[Greg Bock (Greg Bock)]

Hi guys
thanks for all your kind comments, and your clapping hands MikeS.
Yes H, i'd like to do more, but SN searching takes up most of my time and i cant let that Marples guy get too many discoveries in front of me now, can I?

Yes Paul, more time to bring out the detail in the lower right would be good, again it's just time, or more accuratey, not enough of it.

For those who are interested, i just remembered that I should note some processing details here too, so see below.

1. Captured with CCDSoft from home at Windaroo, not Leyburn. (So mildly affected by light pollution domes from Brisbane and The Gold Coast)
2. 98% of all subsequent processing was done in MaximDL Pro including dark, flat, and bias calibration, alignment, colour creation and stacking, digital development filter, stretching, deconvolution, colour balancing, and saturation adjustments.
3. Minor hue adjustments done in PS7 only.

Also, I recall someone asked recently for raw files to be posted to help people understand what these look like before the final product is created, so I have posted a jpg version of one of the 1 minute subframes of Ha which has only had a dark frame subtracted, for interest.

Hope this info helps

[jjjnettie (Jeanette)]

A sweet sweet image Greg.

[RobF (Rob)]

Nice one for sure Greg. No law about having some fun outside nova hunting for a while!