Celestial hemisphere:  Southern  ·  Constellation: Carina (Car)  ·  Contains:  NGC 3576  ·  NGC 3579  ·  NGC 3581  ·  NGC 3582  ·  NGC 3584  ·  NGC 3586
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NGC 3576 The Statue of Liberty Nebula in SHO, George  Yendrey
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NGC 3576 The Statue of Liberty Nebula in SHO

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NGC 3576 The Statue of Liberty Nebula in SHO, George  Yendrey
Powered byPixInsight

NGC 3576 The Statue of Liberty Nebula in SHO

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Description

From Wikipedia:
NGC 3576 is a bright emission nebula in the Sagittarius arm of the galaxy a few thousand light-years away from the Eta Carinae nebula. It is also approximately 100 light years across and 9000 light-years away from Earth.   It was discovered by John Frederick William Herschel on 16 March 1834.  This nebula has received six different classification numbers. Currently, astronomers call the entire nebula NGC 3576. A popular nickname is "The Statue of Liberty Nebula" because of the distinctive shape in the middle of the nebula. The name was first suggested in 2009 by Dr. Steve Mazlin, a member of Star Shadows Remote Observatory (SSRO).  Within the nebula, episodes of star formation are thought to contribute to the complex and suggestive shapes. Powerful winds from the nebula's embedded, young, massive stars shape the looping filaments.

A colorful and interesting emission nebule in the Carina region in the Southern Hemisphere.  This image is from a Telescope Live dataset acquired from Chi-1 telescope at the El Sauce observatory in Chile.  The data acquisition was in late spring in 2020 and 2021 for this group of images, and I processed it in a SHO palette.  This was processed in PixInsight.  As is typical with data from this observatory, it was very good which made for easy post processing, IMO.

A good dataset, a good dark site, and a great result with approximately 6 hrs of intigration time.
I must also give credit to the great set of add-on tools developed by Russ Croman for PixInsight.  BXT, SXT, and NXT have become an important port of my work flow for processing and they should be part of everyone's toolkit, IMO.  YMMV.

After DBE/SPCC/BXT, and a SHO channel combination, I created separate stars/starless images with SXT.  I used an algorithm shared by Uwe Deutermann   to create the RGB stars from the narrow band stars images.  Separating out the stars and processing them separately has become my standard workflow.  It allows me to follow the processing of the rest of the image wherever it leads without having to concerned about affecting the stars.  I applied DBE a second time after stretching; it did noticeably clean up some gradient that became apparent after the final stretch.  I also created a Lum mask from the Ha master that used as both a mask and to add into the final image with the LRGB channel combination tool.  This too has become one of my 'standard' steps (creating the Lum mask from Ha) but it does not always result in improvements to the image.  It is one of those steps, that you have to try it to see if it provides any benefits for a particular image and not just automatically assume it is required.

Update:
I felt like I had left out detail/illumination around the upraised arm of the Statue of Liberty.  In honesty, there isn't much bright detail there and it is tough to generate much without it becoming artificial looking - IMO.  A GAME mask in PixInsight is about the best option if going that route, which I decided I did not want to do.  Consequently, what you see here is what I felt I could reasonably get with the "normal" mask manipulation in the various colors and some judicious application of a couple of range masks.  IMO - YMMV.

CS!!!

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  • NGC 3576 The Statue of Liberty Nebula in SHO, George  Yendrey
    Original
  • Final
    NGC 3576 The Statue of Liberty Nebula in SHO, George  Yendrey
    B

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NGC 3576 The Statue of Liberty Nebula in SHO, George  Yendrey