IC 1318 - Sadr Region Mosaic (4 Panels, HaOIII with RGB Stars) (Mark Germani)

IC 1318 - Sadr Region Mosaic (4 Panels, HaOIII with RGB Stars)

I've been sitting on this data for over a year, a bit scared of the gargantuan task of stacking, stitching and processing. In the summer of 2022, buoyed by the strong Ha signal in the Sadr region, I decided to do a 4-panel mosaic using Sadr as an anchor to frame each panel (I was using the iOptron Skyguider Pro at that time, without GOTO functionality). The relatively high temperatures and long exposure times meant that getting good dark frames were essential, and matching those darks from my library to data taken a year and a half ago was possibly the trickiest part of pre-processing the data.

What I didn't realize at the time I collected this data was that compared to the strong Ha signal, the OIII was relatively weak. Bill Blanshan's narrowband normalization plugin was very helpful in boosting the OIII signal, but in so doing it also revealed a lot of the noise which was very tricky to remove without destroying the detail that was present (particularly in the Crescent nebula).

I'm so happy to finally post this! Sadr is a little offset in the final mosaic, so as to include NGC 6888 (the Crescent nebula) and the the planetary nebula SH2-106 (apparently named the "Celestial Angel Nebula", bottom right and not plate-solved but don't miss it!) Other points of interest in this mosaic include open cluster NGC 6910 (the "Inchworm"), open cluster NGC 6913 (the "Cooling Tower") as well as HII regions too numerous to list.

Thanks for stopping by to take a look. Wishing you all clearer skies in the new year!

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	8927280
PixInsight job	MRAAMQZNRGLPTSEXQFZJGB5MJUABLMEB
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	20h20m50s.70
RA (top/left)	20h10m50s.62
RA (top/right)	20h11m01s.58
RA (bottom/right)	20h30m01s.18
RA (bottom/left)	20h31m27s.80

Dec (center)	+40°05′00″.4
Dec (top/left)	+42°55′57″.9
Dec (top/right)	+37°15′35″.5
Dec (bottom/right)	+37°11′05″.8
Dec (bottom/left)	+42°50′40″.4

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