ngc2264_e130_SHO_HaSiiR_OiiiG_OiiiB_MRSS_8bit

A beautiful area of emission and reflection nebula in Monoceros, featuring, surrounding NGC2264:

- The Christmas Tree cluster

- The Fox Fur nebula

- The Monkey Face nebula

- Cone nebula

 

This image has been built with data from 28/12/14, 10/12/17 and 16/11/18. The total integration time is 15 hours.

 

Camera: QHY23 mono CCD

Scope: Takahashi E130D

Focal length: 430mm f/3.3

 

Exposures:

H-alpha (49 x 600s bin1)

O-iii (8 x 600s bin2)

S-ii (8 x 600s bin2)

Red, Green, Blue (18 x 300s bin2) per filter

 

The data files were calibrated (bias, dark, flat) and stacked in PixInsight using drizzle alignment/stacking and Windsorized-Sigma-Clipping with upper and lower range rejection as well as large-scale structure clipping. This latter parameter allowed the different data sets taken over 3 years to be merged without too many seams and missing areas of data where the camera/scope orientation was different.

 

The image was then built in Photoshop with the following layers:

 

Red channel: Red+H-alpha+Sii

Green channel: Green + Oiii

Blue channel: Blue + Oiii

 

A narrowband Hubble Palette image was built with Sii-Ha-Oiii layers to merge with the final colour image.

 

H-alpha, Sii and Oiii were also blended to form a master Luminosity layer.

 

Star colours were retained by blending a low-enhanced colour layer of the stars only on to the final image.

 

All data was taken from Cumbria (UK) on 3 nights between 2014 and 2018.

Done