The Vela supernova remnant (Highway and the Spur) 14 hours

[Stefan12]

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ito0waokfn...image.jpg?dl=0

See link)

This image took me 5 nights and is a stack of 43, 10 minute exposures through my Hydrogen Alpha and Oxygen III filters, which equate to 14 hours of imaging time.
Unfortunately on the first 2 nights I encountered a few annoying wisps of high cloud, but the sky soon cleared beautifully and the atmospheric seeing was very good.
This is by far the longest time I have spent imaging on one Deep-sky target. It was also a great test for my new Losmandy G-11 mount and 50mm Guider.

Note: I also collected H-beta subs, but I was unhappy with the colour produced when I added them to the RGB channels in photoshop. I settled with just using the same OIII subs in both the Green and Blue channels. I'm not sure if this is cheating, or correct way to do things, but I was pretty happy with the colour

constructive criticism always welcome. Feel free to download the image and have a play around with it

Cheers Stefan

Image details:

Telescope: William Optics 90mm Refractor w/0.8x WO field flattener/ reducer
Camera: QHY9 Mono
Camera sensor temperature: -20 degrees
Guide camera: QHY5 2.0 seconds. Maxim DL guiding
Camera filters Narrowband 1.25"
H Baader Hydrogen Alpha 43x10min (7hrs,10min)
B Baader Oxygen III 43x10mins (7hrs,10mins) Sub total 14hrs

[gregbradley]

Nicely done. That looks great.

Greg.

[RickS (Rick)]

Yep, looks great, Stefan.

[Ross G]

Great looking shot Stefan.

Nice detail.

Ross.

[Placidus (Mike and Trish)]

A beautiful image and very suitable for wide-field. Nicely done.

[strongmanmike (Michael)]

Nice work Stefan, that area is one that lends itself quite well to a HaOIIIOIII blend, good job and glad to hear the gear worked well...that is satisfying in itself

Mike

[Geoff45 (Geoff)]

Very intricate detail Stefan. Great image!

As for the colour. In theory Hb gives exactly the same regions as Ha, but at about 30% of the strength, so according to some people it's pointless taking Hb
This is what Don Goldmann says about H beta: See Qu5 http://www.astrodon.com/Orphan/astrodonfaqnarrowband/
Richard Crisp suggests blending some Ha with the OIII to make the blue channel. See here http://www.narrowbandimaging.com/synthetic_rgb_page.htm
Geoff

[SimmoW (SIMON)]

Woah, love it!

[nebulosity. (Jo)]

A really beautiful image!

I had a play around, and thought I'd post the result just for interests sake. (if that's alright)

Cheers
Jo

[Placidus (Mike and Trish)]

Forgot to mention: Your shot really shows the value of an adequately long exposure. Your 14 hours have produced very clear clean shock fronts and clear clean background. Very tasty.