NGC 2264 - Cone Nebula or "Angel Fish" (Carl)

NGC 2264 - Cone Nebula or "Angel Fish"

Revision title: Refined Hubble Palette

While waiting for Comet C/2022 E3 to rise, I pointed my scope towards NGC 2264. To me, at this focal length anyways, it looks like an Angel Fish, where the Cone Nebula is its open mouth, and the lack of dust (so much dust) in the middle is a silhouette of its body, complete with fins on the top, bottom, and backside. It's as if this dark, celestial fish, swallowed a supernova whilst gobbling up the stars around it. It's not bothered by it, but it illuminates its mouth and throat through its translucent fish skin. Adding to the "Under the Sea" theme of this picture, are what I call "Nebula Bubbles" near the center of the image.

This was the longest integration time I've had for any target yet - over 16 hours. I think it really shows in the overall lack of noise and round stars. I think my processing introduced a little bit of noise, as I was playing with some new techniques. Most notably, I tried Cuiv's guide to creating a Hubble Palette. I tried to find a pleasing balance of gold-to-brown-to-green. The star colors are much better than other palettes and color correction I tried, so that's nice.

This is also my first DSO target in which I used my iPad for flats. I wasn't sure how it would go, since I used some really short exposures for the broadband filters, with my iPad at full brightness and all fancy display settings turned off. But, the short exposures didn't matter much, presumably because my camera has a rolling, electronic shutter, and not a mechanical one. As a bonus, I can get my iPad to the exact same brightness every morning, and run a fixed Flats sequence to knock out the flats on my own time, and in very little time.

Original
B
Final
C

C

Title: Refined Hubble Palette

Description: ... and pre-stretch RGB combine.

Uploaded: ...

SF Bay Area Imagers
Imaged with N.I.N.A.
N.I.N.A. Users

	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	Basic pending
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	7681751
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

Image Index:

Contribution Index (beta):