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SH2-119, Alan Brunelle
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SH2-119

Revision title: Revised 4/2023

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SH2-119, Alan Brunelle
Powered byPixInsight

SH2-119

Revision title: Revised 4/2023

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Description

Revised 4/2023:
I have decided that I now rather like this image!  The fault of the old image being mostly my processing skills at the time.  Also, being even newer to this hobby at that time, my eye was such that just getting some color and details to show was the goal.  There are also issues with the data, but these pale in contrast to skills in my old attempt.  Using the same data, but starting anew with the integration, I decided to 2X the drizzle.  Trying to hold better to colors generated by SPCC, the image may be less dramatic.  That also comes from a less agressive stretch.  This is possible because the better results from each of the NXT tools that I used here.  And I do believe that subtle in this image is somehow truer.  But getting the stars improved without losing them all, really allowed me to leave this image as a more subtle presentation.  I used BXT to do some slight reduction of stars prestretch.  Only until after the stretch, noise reductions (pre-stretch and post final stretch) did I dial in the star intensities and sizes using Bill Blanshan's star reduction tools.  While I have reduced stars very significantly in this image, I checked to be sure that I did not eliminate many if any stars.  They really are all visible.  I feel that this field justifies the use of stronger star reduction because the emission nebulae are very much more subtle, especially when compared to the nearby North America Nebula.  To me the real benefit is the new visibility of the subtle brown colors seen around the dark nebulae in the lower half of the image.  In fact, these can be seen by me even where there is no black clouds, but it is very subtle.  Stars really interfere with these.  The other benefit is the better presentation of the larger galaxies seen near the upper edge of the image, such as PGC 66592.  And also an unnamed galaxy just at 1 o'clock above the prominent star 68Cyg.   Sorry for the star halos.  Maybe someday I work on those!

Original:
I had avoided processing this because the subs I had looked entirely unspectacular. The most distinct detail in the subs after stretching a debayered sub was the nice sharp dark clouds, but they were framed well off to the side. When I did this, I was shooting for those dark clouds, so I figured I would process and crop this in the end. Oddly, this is the one sitting that yielded the most subs that I have had the luxury of using during that session. I am glad that I continued with this. For me, the starfield was completely overwhelming visually. So I did much more star reduction than I normally do. I sometimes use StarNet++ just to be able to see the forest for the trees and realized that there was more there than I had anticipated. This area is very close to the North America Nebula, just to the west. It certainly is less spectacular. This can be seen in any of the wide-field shots presented in this forum where both are presented together. This image was captured with OSC and I was not really able to pull out much in the way of some of the blues that can be seen in the narrow band images presented. Revision B an example image where I removed the stars and then replaced them as I am still trying to learn what PI can do. I did not process this further so there are a lot of artifacts from the process. But I prefer the star reduction. Best not to concentrate on the details in either of these!

Even though there is a lot of star reduction, somehow, some way, a number of smaller galaxies survived along with some other items of interest. These are well marked on the mouse over. These galaxies are not peeking through holes in the clouds. These are being seen directly through the emission. That is very informative regarding the densities of these particular clouds. I speculate (because I really have no clue) that the hydrogen gas in this region is not accompanied by much in the way of dust. So the neutral H2, O2, N2, etc. being transparent to visible light allows the visible galactic light to come through. The only issue is therefore competition between the galaxy photons and the fluorescence from the UV excited gases. And heck, they are really not that bright since I stretched the heck out of this emission anyway!

Comments

Revisions

  • SH2-119, Alan Brunelle
    Original
  • SH2-119, Alan Brunelle
    B
  • Final
    SH2-119, Alan Brunelle
    C

B

Description: The image processed with StarNet, then with star replacement.

Uploaded: ...

C

Title: Revised 4/2023

Description: See updated Description.

Uploaded: ...

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SH2-119, Alan Brunelle