Monkey Head BYA March.jpg

The Monkey Head Nebula, NGC2174 is a beautiful target with lots of fine details, especially around the edges.

The image was rotated and cropped to create a composition with some space for the 'monkey' to gaze into, perhaps remembering Ham the chimpanzee and the other primates that paved the way for humans into space.

I stacked the image with Deep Sky Stacker then assigned the HaSiiOiii data to RGB in that order, which gives more attractive colours and more natural stars than the 'Hubble palette'. I used Photoshop CS2 to stretch details and adjust the colour palette and then used Astra Image for fine-tuning and some gentle contrast enhancement.

Taken on 10 February 2021, using 130P-DS on a HEQ5, using an ASI1600MM-pro and Baader 7nm filters.