Sh2-132 The Lion Nebula in Cepheus - Changed Colour Mix

[Astrobdlbug]

Surprised that I got this completed in a week, but we have had some good clear spells and I have let the rig image until 5am one night. Quite a bit of rejection due to clouds , but I have 14hrs and 40mins here in Ha, Oiii and Sii - particularly pleased that I got all the Oiii in one session from about 1am - 5:30am after the moon set early hours of 6th October.

 

Dates: 2 Oct 2022 ·  5 Oct 2022 ·  6 Oct 2022

Frames: Antlia 3nm Narrowband H-alpha 2": 60×300″(5h); Antlia 3nm Narrowband Oxygen III 2": 53×300″(4h 25′); Antlia 3nm Narrowband Sulfur II 2": 63×300″(5h 15′)

Integration:   14h 40′

 

I processed this almost exclusively in Pixinsight and used the Weighted Batch Processing script to integrate the channel subs, rather than use my usual tool , Astro Pixel Processor, I found it relatively straight forward to use, left settings all on automatic -same as I do with APP, mostly, then did all the usual Pi workflow and spent a long time in Pixelmath working out a colour pallette.I did use Photoshop to do the final tweaks to teh colour and set the background black point as I'm never quite sure where to set it in Pi.

 

The Lion Nebula Sh2-132 is a weak emission nebula near the constellations of Cepheus and Lacerta,its located about 10,400 light years from earth and is a huge area of ionised hydrogen and oxygen gas. There are two Wolf-Rayet stars WR 152 and WR 153, WR 152 that deliver the energy to ionise this region.
In the frame is a very faint planetary nebula, PN G101.5-00.6, I originally thought it was a processing artifact, but turns out its a real thing, its slightly up and left from NGC 7226 in this image

 

Bryan

 

Edited October 8, 2022 by Astrobdlbug

[Dmack1]

I think thats really good. I do love APP but am finding I'm moving more to PI - The new WBPP is just as easy as APP and APP failed on my recent 4 panel but PI had no problem (PhotometricMosaic). I'm also with you on PI for final tweaks (setting black point - how are you supposed to do that in PI????) and I usually run a simple selective high bass routine to make some of the smaller intrenal details jump out a bit.