This image depicts the beautiful region around the constellaiton Corona Australis (Southern Crown). In a very dense starfield near the Milky Way Center, also lies dark clouds and very faint dust nebulosity. To me this image really shows the diversity and beauty of photographing Deep Sky Objects: the star colours, the globular cluster NGC 6723, reflection nebula (IC4812), the dark nebulae, and the really faint molecular cloud of dust that surrounds the crown.
This result is a multi-year integration, with data captured using 2 different cameras (T4i/80D), on 2016 and 2017. The “individual” integrations can be found at
https://astrob.in/269342/B/ (2016) and
https://astrob.in/315425/B/ (2017). I decided to give a good rework on this data, with improved skills and software. The integration task was wonderfully handled by AstroPixelProcessor. Post-processing and final touches with Photoshop and Lightroom CC. To me, the result greatly surpasses the previous attempts, containing more integration time (~3 hours total), and with better SNR, and more delicate processing. What’s your opinion?
Constructive criticism, comments and suggestions are more than welcome in the comments section. Thank you for taking your time to look at this image.
Taken from Rural Skies (Bortle 3-4; SQM ~21.4 calculated), from MG, Brazil.
Date and Time: July 09, 2016 and September 08, 2017
Cameras: Canon EOS 80D @ ISO800 and Canon EOS T4i @ ISO1600 (both unmodded)
Lens: Tamron 70-200mm f/2.8, operated at 200mm f/3.5
Mount: Sky-Watcher HEQ5, tracking, guided and unguided
Guiding: Starguider 50mm Guidescope + ASI120mm + PHD2; ~1.7" RMS
Exposure Detail: 43x120s (T4i, 2016) + 25x240s (80D, 2017). Total 186 minutes
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