Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Cepheus (Cep)  ·  Contains:  NGC 7380  ·  Sh2-142
Conjuring the Wizard Nebula NGC 7380, Howard Trottier
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Conjuring the Wizard Nebula NGC 7380

Conjuring the Wizard Nebula NGC 7380, Howard Trottier
Powered byPixInsight

Conjuring the Wizard Nebula NGC 7380

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Description

This is the first three-channel narrowband that I've completed using my "Final Frontier Telescope", which was installed at the Sierra Remote Observatories (SRO) at the end of June. I used a final tone mapping that yielded SII in maroon, Ha in yellow, and OIII regions in sky blue (though the three bandpasses overlap strongly in many areas). The image is the result of just under 15 hours of subframes (divided roughly equally between the three filters), captured on seven nights in August. To optimize the final appearance, I downsampled the full-scale image by 75%, with a final plate scale of about 0.62"/pixel, and an angular image size after cropping of about 30' x 29'.

I found processing this target to be very challenging. It took me a long time to settle on an initial tone mapping using the Hubble palette, since the stars were the sharpest in SII by far, with the most interesting textures also in that channel, which was brought out by the SHO combination. However, I found the colours from "pure" SHO (i.e. without any green subtraction) to be too harsh, so I used PixInsight's ColorMask to get a re-mix that is more attractive (IMHO 😇). Also, a shout-out to Roberto Sartori and Edoardo Luca Radice for their fabulous PixInsight script "CorrectMagentaStars", which eliminates those overpowering SHO magenta halos with the push of a button!

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Conjuring the Wizard Nebula NGC 7380, Howard Trottier