Seagull Nebula - IC 2177 in OSC

[JimFox]

The forecast was for no clouds last night in Joshua Tree, so I made the run out there to set my astro gear, and to get a first real official use of my new telescope, the Askar fra500. This has a 500mm focal length.

So the night was clear but cold, and my new gear operated flawlessly. I set up first to image IC 3196 which contains the Elephant Trunk, 5 hours later as it sunk below the horizon, I moved to capturing the Seagull Nebula. I had posted my first real image of it last week that I was able to finally capture. I think that image needs to burn...

I was doing my new normal workflow in Pixinsight, once I removed the stars so I could edit the nebula without disturbing the stars, I did the Hubble Palette processing on it, but after I finished it, I didn't care for it as much as the straight out of camera look without the Hubble processing.

So this one is what a color astro camera will come away with when capturing the Seagull Nebula. I did process the image with the normal stretching, etc, but I didn't swap any colors (that's needed to get to the Hubble Palette). This is just the normal colors being bent just slightly from my heavy handed processing....

52 Light frames @ 180 secs
20 - Flat Frames
8 - Dark Frames
20 - Bias Frames (Probably not needed)
ASI2600mc Pro - Astro camera
ASI120mm mini - Guide camera
Askar Fra500 - Imaging scope
ZWO 30f4 - Guide scope
DeepSkyStacker - For Stacking
Pixinsight - For Processing
Photoshop - For Finishing touches
Processed to the sound of silence

All comments are welcome,

Jim

PS. Remember, I am still a babe in Astro. I expect this to improve, I need to get at least three times more data for this.

 

[AlanLichty]

This image has absolutely nothing in common with what you were doing with your DSLR. Fun journey to watch

 

[JimFox]

This image has absolutely nothing in common with what you were doing with your DSLR. Fun journey to watch

Thanks Alan, yeah, it's like night and day. I certainly enjoyed what I was doing with the DSLR and my other common gear, but there is an immense joy to see this higher quality come out as I have upgraded my gear little by little. It's definitely a game where you get what you pay for.

 

[CRTAstro]

Great result on this target using OSC colors Jim ! If you want to experiment with extracting more colors then keep trying with the narrowband channels you have extracted. You may be able to get more hues of orange,yellow, blue and green. Subtlety is always the key imho. But nothing wrong with this version at all and its great !

 

[Jameel Hyder]

Nice results with your new toys. Quite a step up from the DSLR images.

 

[JimFox]

Great result on this target using OSC colors Jim ! If you want to experiment with extracting more colors then keep trying with the narrowband channels you have extracted. You may be able to get more hues of orange,yellow, blue and green. Subtlety is always the key imho. But nothing wrong with this version at all and its great !

Thanks Carlos, I had thought about doing something similar, and I will probably try a few iterations with slight adjustments to the NB channels later on.

 

[Bob Israel]

Wow Jim. This is a beautiful image. I think you'll make me quickly realize that I will need to move from my Camera gear to dedicated. Wonderful result.

 

[Ben Egbert]

Jim this is gorgeous. For us non astro guys, they are all awesome, but the more I look at images, the more nuance I see. More data will produce more detail to an already detailed image.

 

[Mike Lewis]

Jim,

Well, yes, I agree with the assessment you texted me about this image - I think this is your best effort yet. Really nice details, love the colors, and a lot less noise than many of your images. Really an impressive step up - that new scope and camera are really performing well here, as is the mount. And from your write-up, if you are starting to get up to 5 hours of data on some targets that can really pay off too. Carlos has a fun suggestion to try out - to see what that data filtered through the other bandwidths could bring out. But like he said too, this stands on its own as an excellent image, so extra processing is optional in my view.

Great work, like Alan said, a far cry from your original work, and fun to see your progress!

ML

 

[Mike Lewis]

Jim,

P.S. - I just noticed you are still running DSS for preprocessing. I would suggest you try out the WBPP script in PixInsight for your pre-processing. You might get even more out of this, and it is a very easy script to use. I had a night and day improvement when I moved over, and at least some of that was from the preprocessing differences between the 2 programs I think.

ML

 

[Bill Richards]

Jim,

Welcome to the dark side - may you never use your DSLR lenses for astro work again!

Your stars appear nice and round, even in the corners, but it's hard to get a close look with the low res JPG in the post. So your APO looks like it has a good flat field. The colors are vibrant and the image has good detail, but it has a slight grainy appearance - again, difficult to tell by looking at the embedded JPG. It may be a bit oversharpened or perhaps needs a little more noise reduction.

BTW - Bias frames are basically useless with today's CMOS sensors. You should be using Darks, Flats, and Dark Flats instead.

 

[JimFox]

Wow Jim. This is a beautiful image. I think you'll make me quickly realize that I will need to move from my Camera gear to dedicated. Wonderful result.

Thank you so much Bob! Yep, you will. As you get your feet wet, you can pick out which order to get the dedicated gear in. I went to the Dedicated Mount, the Gem28. But I only had it a month, before I realized that as great as it was to be able to GoTo objects I couldn't go to before, that it was really the quality of the Astro that I needed to improve, and that was only going to improve by getting the dedicated astro camera, in my case the ASI2600mc Pro.

For the ultimate quality, going with the mono astro camera is the way to go. But I enjoyed the color workflow, so I chose to stay with the color (OSC) astro camera, and I don't for one minute regret that choice. I am not at saying, I wish I had gotten a Mono Astro camera, instead I am saying I am so happy I chose the ASI2600mc Pro.

 

[JimFox]

Jim,

Welcome to the dark side - may you never use your DSLR lenses for astro work again!

Your stars appear nice and round, even in the corners, but it's hard to get a close look with the low res JPG in the post. So your APO looks like it has a good flat field. The colors are vibrant and the image has good detail, but it has a slight grainy appearance - again, difficult to tell by looking at the embedded JPG. It may be a bit oversharpened or perhaps needs a little more noise reduction.

BTW - Bias frames are basically useless with today's CMOS sensors. You should be using Darks, Flats, and Dark Flats instead.

View attachment 54465

Hey Bill, thanks so much for this chart. And of course thanks so much for all of the help you have given me. You are one of the unsung hero's that has helped me a lot. But I also don't want to leave anyone out, as also @Mike Lewis @CRTAstro and @Andy Nowlen have all been so helpful. It's great that here at FocalWorld we have so many really knowledgeable astrophotographers who are so willing to help.

I have just figured out how to make some Flat/Darks. I made some the other night out at Joshua Tree. I didn't use them in the processing yet, but I did make some. So perhaps for IC 1396 which I had also shot, I might integrate with using the Flat/Darks also and try that for the first time. Thanks!

 

[JimFox]

Jim this is gorgeous. For us non astro guys, they are all awesome, but the more I look at images, the more nuance I see. More data will produce more detail to an already detailed image.

Thanks Ben! I bet your eye is really getting tuned into what's good and bad in an astro photo. It's great having you, Alan and Jameel along for the ride with this journey.

 

[JimFox]

Jim,

P.S. - I just noticed you are still running DSS for preprocessing. I would suggest you try out the WBPP script in PixInsight for your pre-processing. You might get even more out of this, and it is a very easy script to use. I had a night and day improvement when I moved over, and at least some of that was from the preprocessing differences between the 2 programs I think.

ML

Thanks Mike! I am glad you liked this.

I have already started looking into WBPP for a while now, and I plan to use it. But you know me, and my purposeful choosing of babysteps so that everything comes at each step when I feel comfortable. So for right now, my focus is on learning and getting comfortable with the actual processing in Pixinsight. I am very comfortable with DSS, so I will switch to stacking inside Pixinsight too one day, probably before the end of the year, but for right now, I am putting 100% of my energy into the processing part of Pixinsight.

 

[Dan Moorehead]

Stunning

 

[Alisa]

Nice Jim! It actually reminds me of the mythology bird phoenix.

 

[JimFox]

Nice Jim! It actually reminds me of the mythology bird phoenix.

You know what's funny? While I think it looks like a Seagull, it also did remind me of a Phoenix too! Thanks Alisa!

 

[Gramps Potter]

The forecast was for no clouds last night in Joshua Tree, so I made the run out there to set my astro gear, and to get a first real official use of my new telescope, the Askar fra500. This has a 500mm focal length.

So the night was clear but cold, and my new gear operated flawlessly. I set up first to image IC 3196 which contains the Elephant Trunk, 5 hours later as it sunk below the horizon, I moved to capturing the Seagull Nebula. I had posted my first real image of it last week that I was able to finally capture. I think that image needs to burn...

I was doing my new normal workflow in Pixinsight, once I removed the stars so I could edit the nebula without disturbing the stars, I did the Hubble Palette processing on it, but after I finished it, I didn't care for it as much as the straight out of camera look without the Hubble processing.

So this one is what a color astro camera will come away with when capturing the Seagull Nebula. I did process the image with the normal stretching, etc, but I didn't swap any colors (that's needed to get to the Hubble Palette). This is just the normal colors being bent just slightly from my heavy handed processing....

52 Light frames @ 180 secs
20 - Flat Frames
8 - Dark Frames
20 - Bias Frames (Probably not needed)
ASI2600mc Pro - Astro camera
ASI120mm mini - Guide camera
Askar Fra500 - Imaging scope
ZWO 30f4 - Guide scope
DeepSkyStacker - For Stacking
Pixinsight - For Processing
Photoshop - For Finishing touches
Processed to the sound of silence

All comments are welcome,

Jim

PS. Remember, I am still a babe in Astro. I expect this to improve, I need to get at least three times more data for this.

View attachment 54443

Really nice work Jim !!

 

[JimFox]

Really nice work Jim !!

Thanks Bob! It's one I have seen others capture, so even with it not being perfect, I was so happy to be able to capture it.