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Shelob's Lair (Mark 2), Paul Hancock
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Shelob's Lair (Mark 2)

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
Shelob's Lair (Mark 2), Paul Hancock
Powered byPixInsight

Shelob's Lair (Mark 2)

Equipment

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Acquisition details

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Description

Shelob lies in wait, anticipating the harmonious twang as her next meal becomes entrapped in her web. You can see the remains of a small scorpion to her left, a previous meal.

The Tarantula nebula is a massive HII region within the Large Magellanic Cloud. The weather was briefly good here and the seeing was exceptional. This is 6 hours of SHO data captured from my backyard. Hopefully the weather will clear again so I can continue to capture photons of this beautiful region of space.

I've added nearly double the data to my original image and decided that while I usually love the SHO palette it wasn't working for Shelob, so I went with a more duo tone look.

I am hoping to capture much more OIII and SII data in the coming months, the Ha stack looks good now.

I took only the best frames based on FWHM and used them to create a synthetic luminance, this layer received deconvolution and sharpening.

Comments

Revisions

    Shelob's Lair (Mark 2), Paul Hancock
    Original
    Shelob's Lair (Mark 2), Paul Hancock
    C
    Shelob's Lair (Mark 2), Paul Hancock
    D
    Shelob's Lair (Mark 2), Paul Hancock
    E
    Shelob's Lair (Mark 2), Paul Hancock
    F
  • Final
    Shelob's Lair (Mark 2), Paul Hancock
    G

C

Description: An alternative version, with a more careful noise reduction on the luminance and less aggressive stretch. (I uploaded the wrong file before this one if any wonders why this version changed).

Uploaded: ...

D

Description: An alternative framing, a touch wider. Not sure I like it better, I think I do.

Uploaded: ...

E

Description: Decided to use all 20 hours of data weighted using subframe selector. There is a moderate loss of sharpness compared with only using the best 5.5 hours of ha as luminance but a very significant reduction in background noise.

Uploaded: ...

F

Description: Another ground up reprocess of the full 20 hours of data.

Uploaded: ...

G

Description: Shelob reprocessed using the Foraxx palette.

Uploaded: ...

Sky plot

Sky plot

Histogram

Shelob's Lair (Mark 2), Paul Hancock