Four-frame mosaic. Exposure time distribution is somewhat concentrated toward the center, to enhance S/N. My other two recent pictures of this target taken with shorter focal lengths are meant to provide references for registration and gradient removal for this image. This image is the actual goal.
Ver.A is the original version, which is a bit contrasty and saturated in color.
Ver.B is a starless version generated by starnet++ and then further processed.
Ver.C (final) has a lower contrast and saturation, for those with a lighter taste, and is probably safer for most monitors.
Ver.D is an inverted and starless version of the red channel, to better show the filamentary structures in both the ionized nebulas and the dark nebulas.
The original image has about 270 mega pixels. To avoid crashing your browser, here I only upload a 0.4x reduced version. A full-resolution version can be browsed in this Gigapan link:
http://www.gigapan.com/embeds/YLWhWAsO4d4If you search very carefully along the left border of this image, you may find two very interesting tiny objects. One is the planetary nebula PN Hf 38, which has a colorful peanut-shaped ring. The other is the Wolf-Rayet star WRAY 15-682, which has a thin red shell around it. To save the fun for you, I will not further indicate where they are. There are also many other small or subtle nebulas in this image.
This picture probably concludes my endeavor on this target for my entire astrophotography life. With my style of travel imaging, I do not see possibilities of dramatically improving this image unless something in imaging technology fundamentally changes.
Comments