This is easily one of my favorite regions of the sky, I've always been fascinated by the knots and swirls of the Taurus molecular cloud but in all my past attempts, I never was able to invest enough time to do these dark structures justice. With the (relatively) new remote observatory in Southeast Arizona I was able to squeeze in just over 50 hours of total integration before it went away for the season. Initially I had planned to only image in LRGB to see only the complex broadband structure, but after finding out that there was diffuse hydrogen alpha signal sitting behind the dust, I couldn't go without it.
Using my own technique for narrowband continuum subtraction and integration into the LRGB image (
Advanced Narrowband Combination — Night Photons) I was able to isolate the pure Ha signal and add it into the final image.
Continuum Subtracted Ha:
LRGB Image Before Ha Addition:
With the appearance of smoke rising off a raging fire I figured an appropriate name would be "Ashen blaze of Taurus", mostly because it just plain sounds cool! While I do wish I was able to get a bit more Ha data, I am still very pleased with how the final image turned out. I hope you all enjoy!
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