Cocoon Nebula

This shot really needs much more exposure, but the wind ruined over an hour of a two hour imaging run. Given the short total integration time it turned out reasonably well.  This is my second attempt at processing this data. Click on the image to see the original version, then click again to return to this version. The images are not to the same scale as I had to crop more on the first version to remove a gradient that was better controlled in this version.

Object Cocoon Nebula RA 21:48.8, Dec +47:30 Exposure 40 minutes (8 X 5 minutes) ISO 1600  Camera Canon 60 Da  Optics 200mm SkyWatcher f/5 Newtonian reflector with Paracorr for a total  focal length of 1150 mm Location St. Croix, Nova Scotia Processing This image was processed entirely in Images Plus. Calibration stacking did not use dark frames, instead relying on the built in dark suppression in the 60Da. A masked arcsinh stretch was used then the feature mask was used to split the stars from the rest of the image. Several iterations of masked micro curves were then applied to brighten the nebula. The saturation was boosted in the red using a mask and the detail was improved using multiscale decomposition. The stars were recombined and the image cropped and scaled for the web.