LBN 777 - The Baby Eagle in Taurus

LBN 777 aka the "Baby Eagle" - a super cool little dark nebula in the vast Taurus Molecular Cloud. I had been eyeing this target for a while but until now, could never put in the integration time it demands.

 

One of my favorite parts of this image is the bow shock surrounding the head of the eagle. There are also a ton of small background galaxies in this region.

 

- Location: Remote Observatory (Bortle 1, SQM 21.99) near Fort Davis, TX

- Total Exposure Time: 26 Hours

 

Equipment:

- Scope: Esprit 100ED w/ 1x Flattener

- Imaging Camera: QHY 268M

- Filters: Chroma LRGB (36mm)

- Mount: Astro Physics Mach1GTO

- Guidescope: SVBony 50mm Guidescope

- Guide camera: ASI 120mm mini

- Focuser: Moonlite Nitecrawler WR35

- Accessories: Pegasus Ultimate Powerbox v2, QHY Polemaster, Optec Alnitak Flip Flat

 

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Software:

- N.I.N.A for image acquisition, platesolving, and framing

- PHD2 for guiding

- PixInsight for processing

 

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Acquisition:

- L: 268 x 3m

- R: 85 x 3m

- G: 85 x 3m

- B: 83 x 3m

- All images at Gain 56, Offset 25 (Readout mode 1) and -5C sensor temperature

- 20 flats per filter

- Master Dark, Flat & Bias from Library

- Nights: 10/27, 10/28, 10/29, 10/30, 11/2/22

 

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Processing:

 

- WeightedBatchPreProcessing for calibration

- Blink to remove bad subs

- ImageIntegration with PSFSignalWeight weighing to stack

 

Luminance Processing:

- DynamicCrop to remove stacking artifacts

- MureDenoise for linear noise reduction

- DynamicBackgroundExtraction

- StarXterminator to create starless version and also extract luminance star_mask

- GeneralizedHyperbolicStretch for initial stretch

- HistogramTransformation x3 for further stretch with slight NoiseXterminator between each HT iteration

- LocalHistogramEqualization at 0.1 amount and 128 kernel radius for slight detail increase in nebulosity

- Slight NoiseXterminator for NR

 

RGB Processing (apply to each master then combine):

- DynamicCrop to remove stacking artifacts

- MureDenoise for linear noise reduction

- DynamicBackgroundExtraction

- StarAlign G and B to R

- ChannelCombination to combine to linear RGB

- DynamicCrop to crop edges

- DynamicBackgroundExtraction

- StarAlign to Luminance

- StarXterminator to turn starless and save extracted stars

- NoiseXterminator at 0.3 to reduce noise

- HistogramTransformation to stretch

- NoiseXterminator for NR

- SCNR green then invert image -> SCNR green -> invert back to remove green and magenta tint

- CurvesTransformation for color balance

 

Combine Luminance and RGB and further processing:

- LRGBCombination to combine starless luminance and starless RGB images with chrominance NR enabled and saturation at 0.35

- SCNR blue at 0.5

- MultiscaleMedianTransform for chrominance noise reduction

- SCNR green

- CurvesTransformation for brown saturation

- Stretch RGB and Luminance stars with HistogramTransformation

- Combine into LRGB stars image with LRGBCombination

- PixelMath to combine starless nebula and stars images together

- Use luminance star image as star mask

- MorphologicalTransformation for slight star reduction

- Slight NoiseXterminator for noise reduction

- RangeMask on starless luminance to target background galaxies

- HDRMulstiscaleTransform with range_mask applied on final image to recover details from background galaxies

Done