The Giant Molecular Cloud that Spawned NGC 6883, 71, 57 (SHO True Color) (Alex Woronow)

The Giant Molecular Cloud that Spawned NGC 6883, 71, 57 (SHO True Color)

The Giant Molecular Cloud that Spawned NGC 6883, 71, 57 (SHO True Color)

OTA: FSQ 106ED f/3.6
Camera: QHY 600 Pro
Observatory: Telescope Live / SPA-1
Date of Capture: Aug. 2023
Date of Processing: Sept. 2023

Exposures:
H: 15 x 300 sec
O: 14 x 300
S:15 x 300
Total Exposure time: 3.7 hours
Image Width: 5.3 deg

Processing Tools:
1.   Commercial: PixInsight, Photo Director 365, Topaz (Studio2)
2.   Pixinsight Addons: NoiseXTerminator, BlurXTerminator, StarXTerminator, Normalize Scale Gradient
3.   My Scripts: NB_Assistant, AC_Restar, Subframe Weighting Tool (Excel w/ J. Hunt)

Target Description:
Besides LDN 585, this massive cloud in Cygnus hosts a wide variety of bright and dark nebulae and other objects, each deserving a paragraph or two on their own. But I will use the manyness of the features as an excuse to discuss none.

Processing Description:
Once, I avoided wide-field data sets, fearing they lacked detail and personal interest. Apparently, I was incorrect. This was a fun and challenging data set with much detail and complexity. The pixel resolution, >2 arc-seconds, begs for a drizzle approach. But the image, as is, already has to be downsampled 2x to be of reasonable size for posting.

The challenge with all narrowband images is getting reasonable star colors. I use a two-image approach: one true-color SHO image that is just that, without any color calibration. That image best represents the nebulae. A second true-color SHO image receives color calibration and provides the stars to the first image (late in the processing train). I believe the resulting star colors reasonably represent what our eyes would see—if they were a 1000x more color sensitive. I have downplayed the stars in favor of featuring the nebulae; after all, I prefer the nebulae to an image of a bunch of stars concealing a faint nebulae—but each to his/her own.

Hope you like it…

Alex Woronow

Final
Original
B

B

Title: Plate Solved

Uploaded: ...

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	8512178
PixInsight job	IAER2KXG08822JSFRECGI7BG7OXGM4FD
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	20h10m06s.80
RA (top/left)	20h23m29s.30
RA (top/right)	19h56m49s.42
RA (bottom/right)	19h57m18s.19
RA (bottom/left)	20h22m49s.39

Dec (center)	+34°54′36″.8
Dec (top/left)	+36°37′52″.3
Dec (top/right)	+36°39′39″.8
Dec (bottom/right)	+33°06′16″.9
Dec (bottom/left)	+33°04′24″.2

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