NGC6188: The Dragons of Ara (Brian Boyle)

NGC6188: The Dragons of Ara

It's a good time of year to be starting out with a new monochrome camera and LRGBSHO filter set.

Two of the iconic narrowband targets - the Dolphin of Canis Major (Sh2-308) and the Dragons of Ara (NGC6188) - make for a great night's entertainment. From -45 South, the Dolphin starts on the meridian and almost slap bang in the middle of the night when the Dolphin dips below 35deg altitude in the West, up pop the Dragons in the East at the same altitude.

So for the last two nights I have been amassing data on the Dolphin (a hard target). And then letting the rig take care of itself at 1.30am to image the Dragons until dawn (well.. 20mins after twilight begins).

The first night, the clouds rolled in immediately after I went to bed, and I amassed 5 hours of dark frames. Last night, however, things went much better.

I am quite pleased with the resulting image. No doubt I will post revisions as I play around with the colour scheme a bit more - and possibly collect more data on the Dragons tonight.

While there are many stunning (and much better) images of this iconic target out there, for my second NB image, I think its OK. And I quite like the colour scheme, although I doubt I could reproduce it when I add in more data (hence the reason for posting this now).

Now onto that *$#!% Dolphin.

Observational details

13 & 14 March 2021

Ha 36 x 300s

[OIII] 36 x 300s

[SII] 35 x 300s

Mean FWHM 3.5arcsec (2.5px) Night 1

Mean FWHM 5 (3.5px) Night 2

Original
B
C
D
Final
E

B

Description: With double the data. Looks remarkably similar, although I need not need to apply as much noise reduction in post-processing.

Uploaded: ...

C

Description: With a little more colour separation between the [SII]-strong and [OIII]-strong regions

Uploaded: ...

D

Description: On a cloudy night, an old astronomer's thoughts turn to reprocessing data. I have redone the Dragons of Ara with what I have learned over the past 2 months. Better deconvolution, more restrained and conventional SHO palette and better star reduction. I think...

Uploaded: ...

E

Description: Two years after taking this image, I am getting closer to doing a good job on the post-processing. Thanks to RC Astro.

Uploaded: ...

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	7135551
PixInsight job	OO533FTE32KS77U5JHDB9O2960Y8TGX6
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	16h39m05s.82
RA (top/left)	16h42m04s.27
RA (top/right)	16h43m10s.21
RA (bottom/right)	16h36m13s.15
RA (bottom/left)	16h34m51s.89

Dec (center)	-48°38′38″.1
Dec (top/left)	-49°35′06″.1
Dec (top/right)	-47°49′49″.5
Dec (bottom/right)	-47°41′50″.4
Dec (bottom/left)	-49°26′55″.2

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