Helix Nebula (Richard Francis)

Helix Nebula

Here is an image of the Helix Nebula which is the last I made with my big RC scope before it was returned to the factory for rework. The target was quite low in the sky and I had really quite large guiding errors. I learned a few things during the process. Firstly, there is almost no SII signal here. Secondly, at these low elevations we are looking through a long atmospheric path length and the chance of something in the way increases. Many frames had to be discarded due to very low signal-to-noise. Thirdly, when doing an automated series, it's a good idea to check that the binning in all channels is the same ...

Despite the large number of exposures, the data are quite noisy, probably because of the gross imbalance between the numbers of frames in the different channels.

I processed it in bi-colour, putting Ha in red, OIII in blue and green is 50% each of Ha and OIII. After some extensive processing in PixInsight I exported a TIFF to PhotoShop and let my wife Huguette see what she could do. This is the result. It's not enormously different from the PixInsight version, but it is nevertheless more pleasing in many ways.

The Helix Nebula is a planetary nebula at a declination of -20 degrees, so fairly far south for European observers. It's about 700 light-years away.

Original
B
C
Final
D

B

Description: Decreased gamma and increased saturation

Uploaded: ...

C

Description: I added a further 10 OIII images which had been acquired at 1x1 binning, and completely reprocessed everything, including a pseudo-luminance channel made by combining the Ha and OIII masters using a straight addition in PixelMath. This version has R = Ha; G = 50% Ha + 50% OIII; B = 10% Ha + 100% OIII. It's also rotated 180 deg.

Uploaded: ...

D

Description: With the same processing as the precious image, this has a different and simpler channel mix: R = Ha; G = OIII; B = OIII

Uploaded: ...

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	2053620
PixInsight job	RWKH0JYY95ZD38FWTQJH2HUPXFQOC7P8
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

RA (center)	22h29m38s.69
RA (top/left)	22h30m45s.22
RA (top/right)	22h28m31s.36
RA (bottom/right)	22h28m31s.97
RA (bottom/left)	22h30m46s.21

Dec (center)	-20°50′22″.7
Dec (top/left)	-20°38′26″.1
Dec (top/right)	-20°38′41″.3
Dec (bottom/right)	-21°02′17″.6
Dec (bottom/left)	-21°02′02″.6

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