NGC 2174 Monkey Head Nebula in 10 mins (Mike Dobres)

NGC 2174 Monkey Head Nebula in 10 mins

The Monkey head nebula in orion just 6,400 light years from planet earth. A very strong HII emitter that makes capture with the L eXtreme filter very easy. It just popped out after a few minutes. Captured and stacked as a livestack in Sharpcap, then processed in Startools. Needed very little processing. Most of the detail was already visible in the Sharpcap livestack save-as-seen.

Very easy to see the eyes, mouth and brow of the monkey. I actually think its more like a neanderthal head than a monkey head.
The original version was stacked in Sharpcap and processed in Startools-

January 2023: Many cloudy nights and time on my hands led me to try re-processing this image
Version C was restacked in PI, and only 219 of 246 of the 4 sec subs were integrated. So total integration time is now down to less than 9 mins! Not too bad Processed in Startools. Was less aggressive with noise reduction and managed to bring out some of the OIII signal in the center of the nebula.

Versions D and E the same PI stack used in version C, but used PI DBE, BlurX, Noise X and curves.

Version F: skipped DBE or ABE, straight from WBPP to BlurXt, NoiseXt, Curves then GradientHDRC - but still needed to revert to Startools repair to remove coma in corners!

Version F: HOO version using Pixinsight Narrow Band Normalization process.

D

Title: Pixinsight stacked and processed with BlurXt

Description: Use of BlurX and Noise X really helped clean this image up!

Uploaded: ...

E

Title: Pixinsight stacked and processed with BlurXt

Uploaded: ...

F

Title: Pixinsight stacked and processed with BlurXt and NoiseXt

Description: Stacked with WBPP, then BlurXt, NoiseXt, Curves, Gradient removal and a final star rounding with Startools

Uploaded: ...

G

Title: HOO version

Description: Pix WBBP Master reprocessed with Narrow Band Normalization in HOO pallet to enahnce OIII signal.

Uploaded: ...

StarTools
Astrophotography in Spain
Dobson imagers
Short exposures DSO
Duo-band, Tri-band, and Quad-band Imaging
Astrophotography with Dobson

	Distinct awarded users	Total awarded images
Image of the day
Top picks
Top pick nominations

	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Deep sky
Solar system
Extremely wide field
Star trails
Northern lights
Noctilucent clouds
Landscape

	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Backyard
Traveller
Own remote observatory
Amateur hosting facility
Public amaeteur data
Professional, scientific grade data
Mix of multiple sources
Other
Unknown

Submitted The date and time when you submitted this image for IOTD/TP consideration.	...
Views by Submitters (available since September 19th, 2023) Every image is assigned to 50% of available Submitters. In the event that at least 80% of them don't view the image before its time in the IOTD/TP process expires, it's assigned to the other 50% of Submitters and the process begins anew.
Promotions by Submitters When 3 distinct Submitters promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for Top Pick status. This requirement, in addition to anonymization of images and distribution to only a subset of them, prevents biases and ensures that the best images are selected.
Promotions by Reviewers When 3 distinct Reviewers promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for IOTD status.
Early dismissal Staff members have a lot of images to inspect on a daily basis, and they can dismiss images if they believe they don't meet the requirements for IOTD/TP selection. If an image is dismissed 5 times, it's removed from the process. This streamlines the process and ensures that any bias present in promotions could be overruled by other staff members.

Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	5433393
PixInsight job	JIISPHNICWQV03TZBFENLSM2210Q3XCL
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	06h09m49s.95
RA (top/left)	06h10m24s.32
RA (top/right)	06h08m05s.67
RA (bottom/right)	06h09m15s.75
RA (bottom/left)	06h11m34s.47

Dec (center)	+20°31′14″.1
Dec (top/left)	+20°54′17″.9
Dec (top/right)	+20°30′14″.9
Dec (bottom/right)	+20°08′04″.10
Dec (bottom/left)	+20°32′03″.8

Image Index:

Contribution Index (beta):