The Theta Musca SuperNova Remnant in HOO

The Theta Musca Supernova Remnanant-G304.4-3.1

 

this is a recently discovered SNR (first imaged in high resolution just over a year ago by Bray Falls)

 

 

The object is huge and too big for the small sensor of my imaging camera, so I will have to re-attempt with possibly my RedCat51 at some future point in time.

 

Equipment

HEQ5/ASIAIR/Sharpstar Z4/Antlia 3 nm Ha Filter/Optolong 3nm OIII filter/ZWO ASI533MM Pro

 

Integration

16 hours in OIII (10 minute subs)

4 hours in Ha ( 10 minute subs)

 

Location

 

Bortle 6

 

imaged over multiple nights in July 2024

 

Processing notes

 

Ha and OIII data stacked in AstroPixelProcessor.

Ha and OII integrations registered in APP.

 

Processed in PixInsight

 

Dynamic Crop

 

Graxpert for gradient removal (for some reason GraXpert did a better job IMHO than my usual goto ADBE )

 

BlurX-correct

BlurX default

 

Starnet++

 

SetiAstro NB to RGB script to convert Ha and OII star masks to star layer -only mild stretch (4.0) applied

 

NoiseX on starless images

 

GHS for starless layer. Had to experiment to not overstretch the data especially Ha and swamp the image with ha signal

 

Linear Fit

 

HOO image constructed with PixelMath

Red- Ha

Green- 0.2 Ha +0.8 OIII

Blue-OIII

 

mild curves transformation

 

star layer added using Pixelmath

 

Narrowband Normalisation

BlurX

NoiseX

 

levels adjustment in Photoshop CS

 

Comment

 

Images published on the web tend to show the oxygen areas in an electric blue and the Ha areas in a hue closer to pink

 

while it was possible to achieve this colour palette by using adjustment layers (Hue/Saturation, colourise) I have chosen to go with the image more or less as it emerged from PixInsight

 

 

 

Done