M1 - The Crab Nebula

[JimFox]

Thankfully Sunny Southern California has been living up to it's name recently. There is lot's of clouds all over, but I have had some nice pockets of clear nights at my home. Now the caveat is that it's Bortle 9. Short of imaging from the Strip on Las Vegas I don't know where there will be worse light pollution.

I am using the new to me Antlia ALP-T filter. It's a 5nm dual band filter. It's a middle ground between the Optolongs L-Ultimate (3nm) and L-Extreme (7nm). So far I really like it. Though, it's pretty thick compared to my old Dual Band filter the L-Enhance. So I am having to up my times of my exposures. In this case, I shot this with 10 minute subs.

The Crab Nebula I have always found interesting because of all of the fine detail in it. Lot's of webs and threads in it. So this is my most detailed capture of M1 so far. I am really enjoying the amount of detail I captured.

I also added Graxpert into the mix to use instead of DBE for the smoothing of gradients in the background. It worked well, though it seemed as if it changed the WB of the image a bit also. I wasn't expecting that. Any suggestions on where to use Graxpert in the Pixinsight workflow would be appreciated.

108 - Lights at 600 secs with the Antlia ALP-T 5nm filter
30 - Flats
30 - Dark/Flats
30 - Darks

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

All comments are welcome,
Jim

 

[AlanLichty]

Cool deep space target. Lots of interesting little details in this nebula.

 

[Comet Hunter]

nicely done

 

[Jameel Hyder]

Nice one Jim. Looks more like ateries and veins than a crab though.

 

[Mike Lewis]

Jim,

Wow, that's very well done. I would not have considered this object with that type of focal length, as it is so small but you have managed quite a few details in this rendition nonetheless. I may have to rethink this. Am I reading your number of subframes correctly? You took 18 hours on this? That's impressive - welcome to the long integration time club!

ML

 

[Todd H]

Nice image. Too bad we can’t just take a single 5 minute exposure without having to go through so much stacking and editing to get the final result. Your efforts have paid off, lovely shot.

 

[JimFox]

Nice image. Too bad we can’t just take a single 5 minute exposure without having to go through so much stacking and editing to get the final result. Your efforts have paid off, lovely shot.

Thanks Todd.

Some objects are just so faint, and we have to shoot through our atmosphere. Even a single 10 minute exposure of mine barely shows it.

Have you heard of the Seestar S50 by ZWO? It's probably going to be the closest to your wish. I got one to supplement my regular Astro gear, and it's new so it's not perfect, but mostly it's fun and simple. It will put out a jpg for you and you can watch the object get better defined as it stacks in real time as it images.