Soul Nebula - SH2-199

[JimFox]

New Years Day saw a small break in the clouds in SoCal, so I set up the astro gear in the 4 foot opening I have in the very small patio deck here in California. It's Bortle 9, about as bad you can get, but I did what I had to do.

Because of the small window to the sky here, I only had a small window in which to image before everything was going behind buildings or trees, so with the Soul Nebula, I didn't get enough imaging on it, but enough to give me a taste for me. It's the first time I have captured the Soul Nebula that I recall. Friday is going to be clear, so I will be running out to Joshua Tree to set up my astro. I would like to get more imaging done on the Soul Nebula, but it will depend on the location of the moon, I haven't checked that yet.

15 - Lights @ 300 secs
30 - Flats
30 - Flat/Darks
5 - Darks
L-Enhance filter by Optolong

iOptron Gem28
ASI2600mc Pro
ASI120mm mini - Guide camera
Askar FRa500 - Scope
Stacked in DeepSkyStacker
Processed in Pixinsight
Finished in Photoshop


All comments are welcome,

Jim

 

[AlanLichty]

Nice result in spite of the obstacles you face in shooting from urban SoCal.

 

[Ben Egbert]

Neat result for such challenging conditions

 

[CRTAstro]

Nice one Jim!, more data would do it justice

 

[Mike Lewis]

A great target, as stated above, more data will help with the noise, as well as some dedicated NR too.

Did you ever decide to buy PixInsight? If so, have you considered any of the Russell Croman tools (NoiseXTerminator, StarXTerminator, BlurXterminator?) Lots to spend on software I know but more so than any other photographic discipline, your final results with astrophotography processing depends on how good your processing tools are, and how well you know how to use them. IMHO money spent on good core astro software tools and then spending the time to learn how to get the best out of them (as you have started doing) will yield the biggest improvement in your results moving forward, beyond any additional gear you might get...

ML