Soul of the Soul Nebula (David McClain)

Soul of the Soul Nebula

Raw frames courtesy of Deep Sky West Remote Observatory in New Mexico, USA. (deepskywest.com) Data obtained with FSQ 106EDXiii / QSI683wsg / Lodestar / Paramount MyT.

21 hrs total integration (16x900s R, 16x900s G, 16x900s B, and 18x1800s H-alpha). The palette is RGB with H-alpha serving as Luminance.

What happens when we strip away nearly all the stars? Take a close look at all the floating blobs and the protruding columns.

Looking back at my previous images of this nebula, you can definitely see those blobs in the previous images too. But they just don't jump out at you as much as they do here. However... I think I prefer the images with reduced but not elided stars. The full-on RGB is much too chock full of stars to see much of anything. Moderating the stars with H-alpha is the ticket to moderation.

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Distribution of astrophotographers

This table shows the number of distinct astrophotographers who have been assigned and IOTD/TP award compared to the total number of images awarded.
	Distinct awarded users	Total awarded images
Image of the day
Top picks
Top pick nominations

Distribution of subject types

This table shows the distribution of awards per subject type, compared to the popularity of images of that subject type.
	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Deep sky
Solar system
Extremely wide field
Star trails
Northern lights
Noctilucent clouds
Landscape

Distribution of data sources

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	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Backyard
Traveller
Own remote observatory
Amateur hosting facility
Public amaeteur data
Professional, scientific grade data
Mix of multiple sources
Other
Unknown

The “AstroBin Image of the Day and Top Picks”, or IOTD/TP, is a long-running system to promote beautiful, interesting, peculiar, or otherwise amazing astrophotographs, with a focus on technical excellence. Learn more.

Submitted The date and time when you submitted this image for IOTD/TP consideration.	...
Views by Submitters (available since September 19th, 2023) Every image is assigned to 50% of available Submitters. In the event that at least 80% of them don't view the image before its time in the IOTD/TP process expires, it's assigned to the other 50% of Submitters and the process begins anew.
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Status	Basic failed
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	1077190
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
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