California Nebula

[JimFox]

From Thursday night, I made a run out to Joshua Tree to take advantage of the clear skies. Everything is lower in the sky right now, at least all of the objects that we want to image. So it's hard to get more then 3 hours on an object in one single night. But of course 3 hours is about twice the amount of time I was spending on an object when I was using my DSLR setup, so while the detail could get better with 10 to 12 hours, 3 hours is a huge improvement from my work from a year or two ago.

The California Nebula is all pure Ha (red) as far as I know. Red is about all you see here, especially when imaging with a OSC (Color) astro camera.

I hope to get some more time on this next week, but for now, I am pretty happy with this.

The moon was at 82% full, so I used my L-Enhance filter. The moon hadn't risen for this yet, so perhaps the L-Enhance wasn't needed yet, but I just wanted to run with the same filter all night long instead of hassling with changing it. I have a filter drawer assembly so it's physically not hard to change, but it gives a chance for dust to get into the optical train by opening it.

48 - Lights at 180 secs with the Optolong L-Enhance Filter
30 - Flats
30 - Dark/Flats
10 - Darks

iOptron Gem28
ZWO ASI2600mc Pro
ZWO 120mm Mini - Guide Camera
Askar Fra500
Stacked in DeepSkyStacker
Processed in Pixinsight
BlurXterminator
NoiseXterminator
StarXterminator
Final Touches in Photoshop

All comments are welcome,

Jim

 

[Ben Egbert]

Neat image Jim. When you add data it will be with a different amount of moonlight how will that effect it?

 

[AlanLichty]

Nice result - I can see how the nebula got its name.

 

[JimFox]

Neat image Jim. When you add data it will be with a different amount of moonlight how will that effect it?

Thanks Ben, glad you like this.

There are tools that take out any moonlight gradients that would be in the image, so the moon gets neutralized. The extra data will just bring out more details in the nebula, and some fine detail gets more detail.

 

[JimFox]

Nice result - I can see how the nebula got its name.

Thanks so much Alan!

 

[Mike Lewis]

Very nice result Jim, lovely work. You are now getting a much cleaner result with smaller stars, just an overall improvement in your older work - I am sure it is gratifying.

One correction - while I think this nebula might be predominantly Hα based, there is other narrowband emissions in there. I refer you to

https://www.focalworld.com/media/lrcc_srgb_fw_caneb_withstars_pscc-jpg.6977/ my version (lots of better oones than this out on Astrobin too) that do show some multiple emmissions. If I recall though I also could get no OIII from this (although I thijnk others have found some) and so my images of it are mixes with just Hα and SII. Your filter is not going to separate Hα and SII (too close in wavelength) and so not surprising if you got basically all Hα in this...


That being said, I like this version of yours quite a bit - looks very natural with lots of subtle detail...

ML

 

[JimFox]

Very nice result Jim, lovely work. You are now getting a much cleaner result with smaller stars, just an overall improvement in your older work - I am sure it is gratifying.

One correction - while I think this nebula might be predominantly Hα based, there is other narrowband emissions in there. I refer you to

https://www.focalworld.com/media/lrcc_srgb_fw_caneb_withstars_pscc-jpg.6977/ my version (lots of better oones than this out on Astrobin too) that do show some multiple emmissions. If I recall though I also could get no OIII from this (although I thijnk others have found some) and so my images of it are mixes with just Hα and SII. Your filter is not going to separate Hα and SII (too close in wavelength) and so not surprising if you got basically all Hα in this...


That being said, I like this version of yours quite a bit - looks very natural with lots of subtle detail...

ML

Thanks so much Mike!

And thanks for the correction on the Ha. I liked your version of it from the mono with that extra SII getting captured, that's a really nice touch. I will try some Hubble palette conversions of this OSC data later at some point, and I will be very interested to see if I can come close to replicating your colors.

 

[Alisa]

Very nice Jim! You're starting to get some great detail in these shots!

 

[Comet Hunter]

California Dreaming for sure.