The War and Peace Nebula in SHO (Bogdan Borz)

The War and Peace Nebula in SHO

"NGC 6357 is a diffuse nebula near NGC 6334 in the constellation Scorpius. The nebula contains many proto-stars shielded by dark discs of gas, and young stars wrapped in expanding "cocoons" or expanding gases surrounding these small stars. It is also known as the Lobster Nebula and the Madokami Nebula by some fans of the Japanese anime Madoka Magica due to its resemblance to the main character from the anime, and a popular fan petition to rename it.

This nebula was also given the name War and Peace Nebula by the Midcourse Space Experiment scientists because of its appearance, which, in infrared images the bright, western part resembles a dove, while the eastern part looks like a skull." (Source: Wikipedia)

I shot this spectacular Southern nebula using the T3 from Chilescope, in a classical Hubble narrowband composition. Thanks to Wikipedia I finally understood why it is called the "War and Peace" nebula (didn't make any sense no matter how long you looked at it...) It was processed completely in Pixinsight, using human intelligence (don't be too critical, no upgrade is possible I'm stuck with version 1.0 : ). I only used Starnet to simplify the starmask creation process. I practically never treat starless images and add the stars towards the end (I tried once or twice, but starnet can produce some artifacts depending on star/nebula distribution). Preserving the nebular transparency is one of my goals as you probably know by now. This one offers a fascinating mix of transparent oxygen clouds in the central part, some that are like a dense mist, which I rarely observed in other nebulae.

Data acquisition : May 5th and June 6th

Ha 21x600s

OIII 19x600s

SII 16x600s

AAA : Astronomes et Astrographes Amateurs
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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	4683685
PixInsight job	B3SZFRZD6ZAYF7JHKREX8NQ4TN9T6SLM
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

RA (center)	17h24m40s.959
RA (top/left)	17h27m11s.710
RA (top/right)	17h22m10s.261
RA (bottom/right)	17h22m08s.969
RA (bottom/left)	17h27m13s.405

Dec (center)	-34°11′38″.53
Dec (top/left)	-33°39′49″.24
Dec (top/right)	-33°39′55″.91
Dec (bottom/right)	-34°43′16″.53
Dec (bottom/left)	-34°43′08″.82

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