Description:

NGC 3572 is an open cluster located in the Carina constellation in the southern hemisphere. The stars within NGC 3572 are relatively young, in astronomical terms, only a few million years old!

One fascinating aspect of NGC 3572 is the surrounding nebula, full of dust and gas clouds. Among these are the structures known as the Southern Tadpoles, which are two large, dense pillars of gas and dust stretching towards the cluster. They earned their name due to their striking tadpole-like shapes.


These Tadpoles are notable due to their size (each is several light years long), and because they're likely stellar nurseries, where new stars are being born. The process of star birth often occurs in dense gas regions like these, where gravity pulls the gas and dust together until a star forms.

One thing I also find quite striking is this little guy that the tadpoles seem to be aiming at which looks like an ear...


Processing:

My image processing workflow hasn't undergone many changes recently. This image is still narrowband with RGB stars and a custom colour palette that I tweak for each object I process always starting with an SHO combination and then shifting the hue locally up until I get something I like.

It was reassuring to hear Russell Croman confirm in his latest Astro Imaging Channel discussion that using a combination of dithering and drizzling significantly enhances BXT's effectiveness, particularly with intricate details. It's quite remarkable how my 750mm refractor is delivering a level of detail that typically would require a much higher resolution instrument, which is truly satisfying.However, I need to highlight that my technique involves drizzling my images at 2x, resulting in quite large images. In comparison to 1x drizzle, this method seems to enhance the resolution of BXT considerably. Russell stated in his talk that there's no apparent advantage in using 2x drizzle over 1x, suggesting that it won't yield additional detail with my system which is very well sampled at 1.05 arc/px.

Intrigued by this, I conducted an experiment to verify this statement and found from my own experience that 2x drizzle significantly improves the quality of my images. Moreover, this high level of detail is well retained when reducing the resolution back to native for final publication. The difference is far from minor in my view. I plan to make a post on a forum with a comparison between the two methods when I find the time.Despite the added challenge of dealing with larger images, my computer's capability is up to the task. Therefore, I'll continue to follow this workflow for now.