Another amazing dataset provided by the folks at
Insight Observatory This time a two panel mosaic with deep Ha integration provided by affiliate
@Alpha Zhang from his AG Optical iDK 10" scope. Data acquisition began in November of 2022, and completed in April of 2023. What I particularly love about this image is the deep Ha details of the Cigar nebula, including the rarely seen outer arc which barely exposes just outside of the arm of the galaxy. Also, many folks tend to push the exposure and curves of integrated flux nebula in this area extremely hard, creating a significant amount of noise that only gets amplified more as the process continues. I prefer a much more relaxed and natural look. There is certainly enough data here to recreate an image as such, but it becomes unnatural, and less appealing to the eye. Also, like other data sets from Insight, half the challenge during processing is maintaining the fine details in the final product. These images are quite sharp and never cease to amaze me. The details found in Bode's galaxy are again very sharp as well, and to be honest, I'm pretty sure I did lose some detail by the time I arrived at this final rendition. Data of this caliber requires much more finesse and time, but nonetheless I'm still very happy with the result. I hope you enjoy this latest image!
Both these data sets are available from Insight Observatory, if you'd like to know more, please visit
Starbase where a vast inventory of high quality data sets can be found. Specific links to these data sets can be found underneath the image above. Insight Observatory provides online remote telescope services for educational outreach, research, and astrophotography from remote observatories around the world. If you'd like to know more, please visit
InsightObservatory.com
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