Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Cygnus (Cyg)  ·  Contains:  Crescent Nebula  ·  NGC 6888
NGC 6888 Crescent Nebula in RGB (aka "The limits of an unmodded DSLR"), Jesco
NGC 6888 Crescent Nebula in RGB (aka "The limits of an unmodded DSLR")
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NGC 6888 Crescent Nebula in RGB (aka "The limits of an unmodded DSLR")

NGC 6888 Crescent Nebula in RGB (aka "The limits of an unmodded DSLR"), Jesco
NGC 6888 Crescent Nebula in RGB (aka "The limits of an unmodded DSLR")
Powered byPixInsight

NGC 6888 Crescent Nebula in RGB (aka "The limits of an unmodded DSLR")

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The limits of imaging with an unmodded DSLR

Finally settled my guiding issues (Rowan Belt Mod & fast guiding with 0.5s exposures were the key to 0.8" RMS) and decided to sink a lot of imaging time into a nebula. I wanted to see how far I could take RGB imaging with an unmodded DSLR. Turns out there's a limit and you hit it pretty soon. I would have needed a Duoband filter to get any further.

This is now 25hrs of exposures. In editing I extracted the nebula early with StarNet2 and pushed the reds by 4x (roughly the amount that my unmodded DSLR is less sensitive at Ha). Then merged everything with the stars and processed as usual. It's noisy, but the colors are actually not so bad. Update: Running BXT on the final images (Correct Only) tightened up the stars significantly.

I will probably revisit this editing, but for now I leave it that.

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NGC 6888 Crescent Nebula in RGB (aka "The limits of an unmodded DSLR"), Jesco