Gabriella Mistral and her Gems

[Benjamin (Ben)]

Finally had an entire night of clear sky and no work to do. Given the moon was already quite prominent I chose to do some narrowband imaging toward the South. Have been meaning to reimage NGC3324 and the Gem Cluster for ages. Was hoping to get RGB stars but PixInsight’s Spectrographic Color Calibration seems to do a good job of correcting star colour. The nebula colours resulted from removing the green (making the Ha a kind of orange/red) and saturating the result. Comments and suggestions always welcome :-)

Big image here: https://www.astrobin.com/full/ppylh1/D/?mod=&real=

Scope: Skywatcher 8” Quattro Carbon Fibre f4 Newtonian
Camera: ZWO ASI2600MM (Gain 100, -5°)
Mount: Skywatcher EQ6-R
Filters: Astronomik 2” 6nm Ha (31x180s), OIII (30x180s), SII (30x180s)
Processed in PixInsight.

[TrevorW]

Great capture like this wide field view

[Nikolas (Nik)]

Lovely capture

[Benjamin (Ben)]

Originally Posted by TrevorW

Great capture like this wide field view

I love the detail I can get from the 8” Newt (any more aperture and I’ll be either too poor or the mount will get a bit shaky) and combined with an aps-c sized sensor I’m pretty happy with what I can fit in a frame. Stars are still dodgy at the edge at f4 but I’m gradually getting on top of that with some better collimation.

Originally Posted by Nikolas

Lovely capture

Cheers Nik. All too brief a session but it seems this is the way…

[Dave882 (David)]

Lovely pic Ben. I just love that small beautiful cluster in the middle too it just sparkles!!

[Benjamin (Ben)]

Originally Posted by Dave882

Lovely pic Ben. I just love that small beautiful cluster in the middle too it just sparkles!!

Cheers! I was quite happy with the narrowband stars and the diffraction spikes probably help a little in regard to making the cluster pop out.

[Paul Haese]

I like that composition, I don't think I have quite seen these nebula framed that way before.

[Benjamin (Ben)]

Originally Posted by Paul Haese

I like that composition, I don't think I have quite seen these nebula framed that way before.

I think with the background nebulosity being a bit subdued the area around the Gem Cluster looks a little like a giant question mark, and Gabriela is transformed from horizontal poet to a flame headed ghost rider! It’s a lot more poetic when horizontal though: more like Gabriela and a Star studded dream-like boat. The framing without Gabriela at all is quite nice, but it seems like a great loss not to include her :-/