Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Cepheus (Cep)  ·  Contains:  Erakis (μ Cep)  ·  IC 1396  ·  The star The Garnet Star
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IC1396 SHO with dslr, TStew
IC1396 SHO with dslr
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IC1396 SHO with dslr

Revision title: SHO - brighter

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IC1396 SHO with dslr, TStew
IC1396 SHO with dslr
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IC1396 SHO with dslr

Revision title: SHO - brighter

Equipment

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Acquisition details

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Description

Utilizing a 2" SII filter I bought for my future mono astrocam, I tried to do SHO palette shooting 3 nights with SII filter and 3 nights with NBZ filter for Ha and Oiii. Much of this was during the hot summer months of June and August, and some of the nights I did not have matching darks so noise was excessive. This project was also on my simpler gear including a tracker. I did utilize dithering in RA only, and some nights I went out and did a couple manual DEC dithers when possible. SII was so weak I decided to push the tracker the farthest yet, 10 minute subs with gear near the weight limit (imaging gear weighs 10 lbs)! It took very meticulous balancing and polar alignment. In the end it was much work and time, but happy being able to create an interesting image with my old dslr and telephoto lens. 

For the first upload I went straight SHO. I mean I put in all that work so want to see all the colors! I did some curves adjustments to bring up the SII a lot, it was very weak, and then minor curves adjustments to Ha and Oiii

For the second upload I used a more common pixelmath expression to combine the channels. My first time using pixelmath and very thankful Siril (free!) has included this feature. I think this produces a bit more pleasing result but creates a mostly two tone image and perhaps doesn't take advantage of having 3 color channels as much and the different color combinations as they blend. Even though I original was more a purist for proper color and rejected SHO a bit, it is nice to see the result of imaging 3 bands and having more color variation in the data like the first version. But I like them both, so uploaded both. I also did a HOO image but I did not like that one as much.

Both images had photometric calibrated stars added to them, taken with just UV/IR cut so colors would be more natural and with a ~f/5.6 aperture mask to get sharper stars without the bad coma that happens at f2/8. I made a mask so I would not get diffraction spikes from using the lenses own diaphram blades.

Thanks for looking, this was a long but fun project!

Comments

Revisions

  • IC1396 SHO with dslr, TStew
    Original
  • IC1396 SHO with dslr, TStew
    B
  • Final
    IC1396 SHO with dslr, TStew
    C
  • IC1396 SHO with dslr, TStew
    D

B

Title: A Pixelmath SHO blend

Description: Instead of straight SHO this uses a pixelmath expression to blend data into the channels

Uploaded: ...

C

Title: SHO - brighter

Description: After looking on different monitors I realized my original version was a bit dim and brightened it.

Uploaded: ...

D

Title: SHO-hybrid brighter

Description: After looking on different monitors I realized my original version was a bit dim and brightened it.

Uploaded: ...

Sky plot

Sky plot

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IC1396 SHO with dslr, TStew