20210815 - WR 134 (CYG) - A Blue Shell in a Red Sea

What’s in the picture(s)
WR 134 CYG - Wolf Rayet star in the Cygnus region - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WR_134
Quote “WR 134 is a variableWolf-Rayet star located around 6,000 light years away from Earth in the constellation of Cygnus, surrounded by a faint bubble nebula blown by the intense radiation and fast wind from the star. It is five times the radius of the sun, but due to a temperature over 63,000 K it is 400,000 times as luminous as the Sun.”

What was the experience
The next step in the processing skills level was due. I had a couple of test-runs at LRGB imaging (M31, wizard, Iris), but was basically still processing this as an OSC imagine (combining rgb and then standard post-process workflow)
A new approach was necessary to process images captured through different channels (RGB-SHO). Combined in my normal imaging runs, I run some secondary targets as test-objects. As a first test-object, WR 134, an OIII bubble in a field of Ha, captured in those channels
Although there wasn’t enough data to produce a high-level quality image, not enough for the full OIII bubble (the test run was cut short by the DSO disappearing behind the roof 😳 - bad planning 🙄), enough was there to test out the new workflow and learn from the differences, processing Ha and OIII channels separately and playing around with PixelMath

That’s a(nother) small step … for me
Happy with what I’ve learned 🤩

How it was done
Scope: TS-140 APO (FL 910mm / with x1.0 flattener)
Mount: CEM70G
Camera: ASI2600MM Pro
Guiding: @zwoasi OAG, ASI174MM, ASIAIR Pro - avg 0.40”
Filter: ZWO EFW - SHO  Baader
Resolution: 0,85”/pixel, FoV 107’
Moon: 71%(+), Bortle 5/6 SQM 19.60
Photons:  Gain 100 -10c 600s Ha9x OIII7x
Processing: PixInsight (Mac)
Astrobin:

What have I learned from this
Still a lot of things to learn about separate channel processing, still debating on when and how to apply the stretch to the separate channels. I seem to be losing a lot of the nebulosity in the post-processing, so I focused on the starless image to check the nebulosity. This first one seems to have turned out reasonable, although the background is not flawless yet.
No dither, so some walking noise, but since the time of this image, dithering and flats are now part of the imaging workflow.
One step at a time …. 🤩

Clear Skies everybody! 🤩✨🔭

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