M 20: Going Deep (Alex Woronow)

M 20: Going Deep

M20 Going Deep

OTA:……………….PlaneWave 17” f/6.8
Camera:………….FLI ML16803
Observatory:…. Deep Sky West, Chile

EXPOSURES:
R: 23 x 600 sec
G: 18 x 600
B: 17 x 600
L: 20 x 600
H: 18 x 1800
Total exposure   18.7 hours

Image Width: 40 arc-minutes (color image), 25 arc minutes (gray scale image)
Processed by Alex Woronow (2022) using PixInsight, Topaz, 3DLut, SWT

Messier 20 lies in a field of background interstellar clouds and wrapped in a blue cloudy mist of its own. In one processing extreme, the cloudy mist can veil almost all the detail in the inner, red nebula. In another, haze-removing algorithms can cut through the haze and bring forward much, but not all, of the detail that lies behind. My approach lies between these two but favors the latter.

The grayscale image mixes 4x Ha (extracted emission line) and 1x Luminosity channel. This image is about 25 arc minutes across, and the stars have been removed. It covers the center of M 20, showing the details in the dust lanes. Without the colors, M 20 appears to transition to the “surrounding” clouds gently. But at least some of those other clouds probably lie behind M 20. (Color and color contrast can contribute important information about deep-sky objects.)

The color image, which has the fuller grayscale image as its L-channel, shows that the color can mute finer detail, especially when the colors approach the saturation level. But colors do help to delineate the clouds from one another.

Hope you find the image interesting and informative…
Alex Woronow

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Title: M 20 in HLRGB

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Status	Basic failed
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	6233139
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

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