CG4 "God's Hand" Cometary globule taken on Brisbane skies

[Pilgrim (Igor)]

I had photographed it during 23 nights from December 29, 2021 to May 6, 2022 from the balcony in Brisbane (5km off city center) Bortle 7 sky.

ZWO ASI2600MM camera, on TAL-250K (10" Klevtsov-Cassegrain) with special NPZ 0.7x reducer/flattner MkII (F/6). EQ6-R mount.

Full size and details at https://www.astrobin.com/340xzi/


This is L(R+Ha)GB composition with total exposure time of 44 hours.
23 hours H-alpha
11 hours Light
10 hours R+G+B

Individual sub-exposures used: 3 min for RGB, 2 min for L, 10 and 20 min for H-alpha
(Short 2 and 3 minutes are enforced by heavy light pollution. For H-alpha I switched to 20-minute exposures when I installed an off-axis guider)

[Addos (Adam)]

Great stuff Igor! Great target selection, framing and commitment to get that much integration time in this putridly wet past few months!

[strongmanmike (Michael)]

Really good shot of an amazing target, it looks pretty cool normally and it is a pareidolia lovers dream but by accentuating the colours, you have made it look extra dramatic

Mike

[AstroViking (Steve)]

Amazing shot, Igor. That looks great.

I didn't see any sort of 'hand' there - I saw one of those giant sand worm creatures from "Dune", trying to eat the galaxy in front of it.

[gregbradley]

A stunning image Igor. I like this object a lot also and you've done a great job of portraying it.

Greg.

[Bassnut (Fred)]

wow, that's a great pic and clever processing with the galaxy. Excellent, especially the starless version.

[AdamJL]

Glorious! Amazing image. What a fascinating target Would love to see some NR applied.

[Prickly]

Hi Igor,

What a fantastic image. The colours really give it a really etherial sense reaching out to the galaxy in stark contrast.

Amazing effort for shooting from the balcony in Bortle 7. Really great work

Cheers,
David

[Pilgrim (Igor)]

Michael, Steve, Greg, Fred, Adam, David, Thanks very much.

The object is really non trivial for a city. The outlines of the nebula are barely visible on single 20-minute h-alpha frames, dust is not visible at all on 2-minute Light frames.
I would like to accumulate more photons to reduce noise natural way, but this summer turned out to be too rainy.

[Andy01 (Andy)]

Big, bold & dramatic - a fantastic image of this thing - I've imaged this a while back from a dark site and it's not an easy target but yours from the city looks terrific, very well done!

[marc4darkskies (Marcus)]

This is indeed a beautiful rendition! Prefer the version WITH stars though!
Well done!

[Ryderscope (Rodney)]

A great rendition of this classic object. Colours and composition make for a dramatic effect.

[multiweb (Marc)]

+1 Great pic Igor.

[Paul Haese]

Love the colour and the detail. It's an awesome object to image and is a hugely dramatic field.

[Nikolas (Nik)]

Lovely image it really stands out!!