At the Heart of the Matter - Melotte 15

[Astrobdlbug]

Evening,

had a run of clear nights over past week or so  which has allowed me to have captured a reasonably deep narrowband image of the core of the Heart Nebula, IC1805, the star cluster that creates the radiation to excite the gasses in the Heart nebula is called Melotte 15 and its a very interesting target.

This is a departure from my usual wide and ultra wide field images - I am using my AT106EDT without any focal reducer so its at native 690mm focal length when put together with my ASI1600MM - Pro gives a pixel scale 1.117 arcsec/pixel , which is challenging as I am usually guiding at about 0.7 - 0.9rms - but stars are reasonably round (corners are however a bit egg'y)

Colour palette is a a 40/60 combination of SHO, Hubble and coldest nights HOO mix.

Processed mostly with Pixinsight and finishing in PS. (i cant ever get the background level right in PI, always have to go into PS to do final curve adjust...

 

Anyway if you have dipped int the  Anyone Imaging tonght you will see I have had issues with RPi crashes, voltage drops on mount due to new dew straps and controller and I managed to push my Skyshed dome off its rails trying to keep target in view as it appraoched zenith.....seems to be a habit this past month  - perhaps time to build something like a zenith table, but smaller ...

 

Anyway here are the main details for this iamge

AT106EDT

ASI1600MM-Pro

Antlia Ha 3nm Pro 1.25": 76x300" (6h 20') (gain: 200.00)
Antlia OIII 3nm Pro 1.25": 60x300" (5h) (gain: 200.00)
Antlia SII 3nm Pro 1.25": 60x300" (5h) (gain: 200.00)

Integration: 16h 20'

Avg. Moon age: 17.14 days

Avg. Moon phase: 93.21%

 

Bryan

 

 

Edited September 27, 2021 by Astrobdlbug

[AstronomyUkraine]

32 minutes ago, Astrobdlbug said:

Colour palette is a a 40/60 combination of SHO, Hubble and coldest nights HOO mix.

Love the dark moody colours contrasting with Melotte 15. I use this combination regular, usually 60/40 or 70/30 SHO to the ForaxX mix. I started my Melotte 15 before you, but a week of cloudy weather put the brakes on thing. About half way through my SII data now, so should be finished this week.

Edited September 27, 2021 by AstronomyUkraine

[Astrobdlbug]

3 minutes ago, AstronomyUkraine said:

Love the dark moody colours contrasting with Melotte 15

Thanks Brian,  I got this mix together when I started with narrowband imaging / processing early part of last year and its sort of stuck in my head - when I look at my images on astrobin all togther they all have this style of palette - like you I think its a great combo and I personally prefer it to the more standard SHO / Hubble colour choices - but thats my own personal preference ,

Bryan

[AstronomyUkraine]

Just now, Astrobdlbug said:

Thanks Brian,  I got this mix together when I started with narrowband imaging / processing early part of last year and its sort of stuck in my head - when I look at my images on astrobin all togther they all have this style of palette - like you I think its a great combo and I personally prefer it to the more standard SHO / Hubble colour choices - but thats my own personal preference ,

Bryan

I have the PixelMath formula saved as an icon on my desktop. Also have the HOO formula, but haven't used that much. Going for M27 next, so might try the dynamic HOO formula on that. Sometimes I find the ha dominates in the dynamic mix leaving a mostly red image, that's why I tend to weigh heavy on the SHO data when combining both.

[paul]

Yes, the hours paid off - a lovely image, the high-resolution image is well worth browsing and nothing wrong with those stars close-up in the ROI 🙂. I agree that colour scheme is very nice too 👍

Edited September 28, 2021 by paul

[Dmack1]

Super image, great detail and depth.

[TerryMcK]

After all the issues you had during acquisition you've ended up with a great image.

[MarkAR]

Excellent, lovely bright centre surrounded by dark moody clouds and loads of good detail.

[Bob-c]

A lovely looking image, very well done Bryan.

 

Bob.

[Astrobdlbug]

1 hour ago, TerryMcK said:

After all the issues you had during acquisition you've ended up with a great image.

Terry

your advice to stick with the baseline version of Astroberry has worked - sure it doesn’t have all the bells and whistles but it’s stable!!!

I might try out some new version on another RPi but keep the working version to hand to quickly swap back

 

Bryan

[P Holdsworth]

Love the detail and colour palette ......super image 👍

[Astrobdlbug]

13 hours ago, AstronomyUkraine said:

started my Melotte 15 before you, but a week of cloudy weather put the brakes on thing. About half way through my SII data now, so should be finished this week.

Brian

yes should have said that I saw your post in the imaging tonight and that gave me the inspiration to have a go at Melotte 15 as well - hope you get clear skies this week to complete your version - I seem to recall you are imaging sub 1 arcsec/pixel or have I got that wrong - so lots of finer detail to come…

Bryan

[MartinS]

Great image, the colours help enhance the backlit effect from the stars.

[AstronomyUkraine]

3 hours ago, Astrobdlbug said:

Brian

yes should have said that I saw your post in the imaging tonight and that gave me the inspiration to have a go at Melotte 15 as well - hope you get clear skies this week to complete your version - I seem to recall you are imaging sub 1 arcsec/pixel or have I got that wrong - so lots of finer detail to come…

Bryan

I have around 5 hours of SII data up to now Bryan, I want to double that if possible. The resolution on my OTA is 0.91 thereabouts. Great for detail, but tricky guiding if the seeing is bad.