Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Lyra (Lyr)  ·  Contains:  IC 1296  ·  M 57  ·  NGC 6720  ·  Ring nebula in Lyra
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M57: The Ring Nebula (an RRGB image), rhedden
M57: The Ring Nebula (an RRGB image)
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M57: The Ring Nebula (an RRGB image)

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
M57: The Ring Nebula (an RRGB image), rhedden
M57: The Ring Nebula (an RRGB image)
Powered byPixInsight

M57: The Ring Nebula (an RRGB image)

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Description

M57, the Ring Nebula, is one of the more famous summertime deep sky objects. Photographing its faint outer halo is a challenge that is often met by using narrowband filters. For this image, I used the RRGB technique instead, where the red subs are used as luminance, which is similar in principle to Ha-RGB technique. Red subs were a little over 3 h of integration, blue was 50 minutes, and green was 37.5 minutes. The nearby galaxy, IC 1296, is a nice bonus.

In processing, I used a multi-layer technique due to the high dynamic range of this subject. A deconvoluted image with a gentle stretch was used to process the bright parts of the ring. The stars and sky background were a non-sharpened image with a more aggressive stretch. Finally, a highly stretched image with noise reduction was used to process the outer ring, which barely showed up in the other versions. The images were combined by manual masking in GIMP.

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