NGC 1333

[JohnH]

This is NGC 1333, also known as the Embryo Nebula or Phantom Tiara (I cannot see either!). It is 15 in Stephen O'Meara's hidden treasures. NGC 1333 is a reflection nebula in Perseus and discovered in 1858. Magnitude 5.7 and approximately 1,100 ly distant.

Total imaging time 8 hrs 45 mins on my Sharpstar 15028 HNT ( 150mm f2.8 ) over 3 nights of not particularly good seeing.

This image is an experiment. My L layers tend to be completely ruined by light pollution and so I have used a dual band ( ie Ha and O ) together with Ha, R, B and G filters.

I would be interested to know what people think of the way I processed the image:

I created a SuperLuminance layer with the dual band integration and the RGB integrations - I did not use the Ha because that was present in the dual band. It is very small for my setup being 6' x 3', my image scale is 1.89 arc" per pixel.

To obtain the Ha colour layer I used an RGB pseudoLuminance layer to subtract from the Ha integration and then added that to an RGB layer to create chrominance.

Lots of BlurXT and NoiseXT followed by the new Multiscale Gradient Correction process in Pixinsight. I merged the Luminance and Chrominance layers in Affinity Photo 2 and tweaked the colour balance.

The weather having been so bad recently it feels a bit like Dr Johnson: It is not a question of was it done well but just that it was done at all!

Regards to all,

John

[Carole]

Very impressive from Bromley, but like you I could not use luminance around here

My L layers tend to be completely ruined by light pollution

Interesting combination to achieve a SuperLuminance layer, I have not heard of that before. 
Never heard of it being called the Phantom Tiara.

Well done

Carole

[The Thing]

Hi John, very nice image. I've heard of this target but never tried to image it.

As to the gradients, PI has two videos for MGC showing how to use it for different complexities of gradients and image scales. The defaults using the MARS databases are for wide field images.

[Dave A]

John,  Thats a very nice image you have captured- well done