Ngc 5367 - cg12

[markas (Mark)]

This reflection nebula associated with the cometary globule CG12 in Centaurus is around 2000ly distant.

The dusty plume is fairly faint, and really needs a good deal more exposure time than the 3 hours RGB here - (yet another hopeless dark period in the Melbourne area).
So this is a work in progress which I hope can be completed in the next month.

The image FOV is ~40' x 40'. Seeing was nothing special at ~2.6"/px (best I've had at Mt Macedon was 1.8"/px around this time last year).
Mark

[Geoff45 (Geoff)]

Nice one Markas. I am struggling with processing this one at the moment. It’s not easy to get a nice balance between bright and dim stuff
Geoff

[strongmanmike (Michael)]

For such a small amount of data, that looks pretty good Mark, it's a lovely puff of molecular cloud that

Mike

[Mickoid (Michael)]

Looks pretty nice Mark, at least you're a bit away from Melbourne's murky washed out skies, it would be hard to capture this from my backyard! A well processed example of this region, thanks for sharing.

[markas (Mark)]

Geoff, Mike, Michael,


Thanks for looking - and your comments.
Geoff, this is as you say, tricky to process. I really need much more time to improve the delineation of the molecular cloud. Using a synthetic L helped a bit, but I think more time would help a lot more!

Michael, you are right: the Melbourne sky where I live is nearly 2 magnitudes/square arcsec brighter than the cloud.

Mark

[multiweb (Marc)]

Beautiful colors. Love the mix of dust and reflection. Very cool.

[markas (Mark)]

Thanks Marc. Comments much appreciated.
Mark

[Ryderscope (Rodney)]

A lovely combination of dusty areas and reflection nebula Mark.

[markas (Mark)]

Rodney,

Thanks for looking. I appreciate your comments.
Mark

[Robert_T]

the light and dark of the nebula are a treat, but also like how your stars have come out here. Are you doing anything special to keep that natural look with nice range of star colour?

[markas (Mark)]

Thanks Robert.
Judicious use of Arcsinh stretch in PI helps with preserving the colours. Very much a trial and error exercise. I guess the deep wells of the sensor (>100k e-) helps also to limit star saturation whilst still getting reasonably healthy signals from the darker areas. One also needs to be careful with deconvolution (there is none used on this image)
Mark