The Star Alnath (or Elnath), prominent in the bottom left, is the point of the right horn of the constellation Taurus and also a part of the Auriga Constellation. It is one of only two known stars to reside as principle stars in there respective constellations. Technically a binary star, Alnath is a mercury-manganese star with large signatures of other elements present. It is the 27th brightest star in our night sky and is 700 times the luminosity of our Sun.
Also known as Simeis 147, The Spaghetti Nebula is a beautiful mixture of colors highlighting the expanding shockwave of material ejected from this stellar explosion. This leftover supernova remnant occupies the space between Taurus and Auriga and spans 3 degrees of the night sky. The nebula stands out against a velvety, jewel encrusted swath of sky that is just above the ecliptic reaching out far beyond our Galactic borders.
Astrobin for Plate Solve and more details: https://www.astrobin.com/livpeg/#c715196
The Spaghetti Nebula & The Star Alnath
Sharpless 2-240/Simeis 147
Mosaic of 1.2 Panels to include Elnath
Captured from The Marathon Sky Park, Marathon Texas
Acquisition:
February 6th-April 12th, 2021
Integration:
35 x 1800s Hydrogen
35 x 1800s Oxygen
180 x 60s Luminance
180 x 60s Red
180 x 60s Green
180 x 60s Blue
49.4 Total Hours
Equipment:
Takahashi FSQ106 w/Takahashi 645 Reducer @ f3.6, 380mm
QHY600m + QHY7CFW
Antlia LRGB Pro 50mm filters & Baader 50 Ha, O3
WO Guide scope
QHY5lii Guide Camera
Astro-Physics Mach 1
Processing in Pixinsight:
-Calibration with Weighted Batch Pre Processing with Darks, Bias, and Flats + Cosmetic Correction.
-Star Aligned
-Slight Crop via Dynamic Crop
-Dynamic Background Extraction
-Masters Placed into LRGB combination
-Photometric Color Calibration
-Histogram Transformation on RGB + L
-LRGB Combination
-Histogram Transformation on Ha and O3 channels
-LRGB Channels of panel 1 and 1.2 are placed in Mosaic By Coordinates
-Master Mosaic Panel created via Gradient Merge Mosaic
-Ha and O3 Star aligned to LRGB Master
-Starnet performed in Ha and O3 channels with Star Mask creation
-Pixel Math Integration of H-O-O image via image creation with channels in RGB Channels
-Nebula Mask created
Processing in Photoshop:
Imported Masters
LRGBMosaic.tiff
HaO3StarNet.tiff
HaStarNet.tiff
StarMask.Tiff
NebulaMask.Tiff
-Imported LRGBMosaic.tiff
-Imported HaO3StarNet.tiff
-HaO3StarNet.tiff added as layer
-NebulaMask.tiff and StarMask.tiff used to achieve a realistic blend of data, replacing narrowband stars with broadband stars
-HaStarNet.tiff used as Luminosity layer at 20%
-Cropped to desired FoV
-Sig.png applied
-Export