The Bubble - In Process

[Colorado CJ]

Last night I set up and shot the Bubble nebula in narrow band. I only shot in H-Alpha and OIII so far. I still need to shoot some SII to get the true Hubble Palette. It is looking decent though.

For this photo, since I didn't have any SII data, I used an adjusted OIII in its place.

25, 300 sec H-Alpha
18, 300 sec OIII

Skywatcher MN190
ZWO ASI183MM Pro
EQ6R-Pro
Skywatcher 72ED Guide Scope
ZWO ASI120MC S Guide Camera

 

[AlanLichty]

Great result so far. I am still trying to wrap my brain around the notion that you can go out on another night to continue adding to your capture collection for the final rendering of the image.

I am used to worrying about whether breezes will move vegetation to spoil a 2 shot focus stack shot less than a minute apart.

 

[Ben Egbert]

Another great image, keep them coming.

 

[Bob Denton]

A bubble in space? Quite unique.

 

[Mike Lewis]

Great start on a wonderful object. I plan someday to get lots more integration time on this unique object myself. My existing image of this (already posted here I believe) is an RGB version - would love to come back and do a narrowband capture like you have started here.

ML

 

[JimFox]

This is super cool Andrew! An other worldly shot to be sure and so totally different.

 

[Colorado CJ]

Thanks everyone!

Well I reshot the Bubble nebula using some different software. I didn't like how the software I've been using didn't have automatic focusing between filter changes. This new software is a lot more robust and automates almost everything.

When I was editing this new image, I also had an Ah-Ha moment. I've been editing all my astro photos the wrong way all this time! There is a function in stacking called "stretching" and I was stretching my images when I staked them, but also when I saved them later, essentially introducing a lot of noise and limiting detail needlessly. The stacking software automatically stretched images and it has to be deselected each time.

This is my first "correctly" edited image and I can see there is a lot less noise and a lot more detail.

Anyway, here is the image.

25, 300 second SII exposures
20, 300 second OIII exposures
20, 200 second Ha exposures

 

[AlanLichty]

Thanks everyone!

Well I reshot the Bubble nebula using some different software. I didn't like how the software I've been using didn't have automatic focusing between filter changes. This new software is a lot more robust and automates almost everything.

When I was editing this new image, I also had an Ah-Ha moment. I've been editing all my astro photos the wrong way all this time! There is a function in stacking called "stretching" and I was stretching my images when I staked them, but also when I saved them later, essentially introducing a lot of noise and limiting detail needlessly. The stacking software automatically stretched images and it has to be deselected each time.

This is my first "correctly" edited image and I can see there is a lot less noise and a lot more detail.

Anyway, here is the image.

25, 300 second SII exposures
20, 300 second OIII exposures
20, 200 second Ha exposures

This is breathtaking. I could stare into a large print of this for quite some time trying to absorb the details.

 

[Ben Egbert]

I can see the improvement and I thought the original was prefect already.

 

[Linda Combs]

Beautiful

 

[Jim Dockery]

Great work, thanks for sharing.