IC2177 Seagull Nebula Narrowband

[furgle (Adam)]

Higher resolution here



This image is a narrowband presentation of hydrogen, sulfur and oxygen emission lines, mapped to red, yellow and blue respectively.


Normally I prefer at least 20 hours of integration on a narrowband, but the clouds have been relentless lately.


Image:

• 14x 600s 6nm H-alpha
• 11x 600s 6nm SII
• 13x 600s 6nm OIII

Total exposure 6 hours 20 minutes.


Hardware:

• Skywatcher Black Diamond ED120
• SkyWatcher EQ8 Pro Mount
• QSI 683-ws Camera @ -15°C
• Astronomik 6nm Ha, 6nm SII, 6nm OIII filters
• Starlight Xpress Lodestar X2 Autoguider
• Innovations Foresight On Axis Guider
• Starlight Instruments Focus Boss II

Location:

• Orange zone in Brisbane, Australia. (Bortle 7)
• Imaged over 2 nights, 50% moon.

Software:

• Planning & camera alignment with Aladin 9
• Captured with AstroArt 6
• Guiding with PHD2 + PHD_Dither
• FocusLock live focusing
• CCDInspector: Image analysis & rejection
• CCDStack 2+: Calibrate, align, stack, deconvolution.
• Photoshop CC: Reduce noise, high pass filter, levels, curves, color map, saturation.

[Andy01 (Andy)]

Hi Adam, That's got impact!

Unusual framing & colour scheme and great detail for the short integration time.

A question re: your capture subs - You're using darks, flats & bias - do you also use dark flats?
I have the same camera and use darks, flats & dark flats, but no bias.

I'm wondering which yields the best result. My dark flats vary in exposure time with a lightbox from 1 sec to 35 secs depending on the NB filter used.

Cheers

Andy

[furgle (Adam)]

Thanks Andy, I do use dark flats on my Ha & SII as the flats are are around 2-3 minutes exposure time. OIII flats only needs 5 seconds, so I just bias them

[Paul Haese]

That's a nice rendering Adam. I really like the colour palette and the composition is quite interesting.

Andy, I don't do dark flats and I have the same camera.

[Placidus (Mike and Trish)]

A very nice rendition.

The delicate (and well captured) orange-coloured shock fronts to the right of the "cockatoo's head" at top right look reminiscent of Paddington Bear's hat.

[Atmos (Colin)]

I do really like the composition you've got, very nice shot