This is a classic of astrophotography. IC1848 the Soul Nebula (Sharpless 2-199 LBN 667) is one of the most iconic nebulae located in Cassiopea. Because of the strong emission it’s relatively easy to photograph in narrowband.
Soul has great colorful visual rendition when combined in SHO Hubble palette, with the Oiii cores (blue) surrounded by the strong Ha/Sii orange nebulosity ridges.
The nebula was photographed as a “fill-in” target during the capture of the much fainter HFG1 in September 2021 and it is composed of 4.5hrs integration for each narrowband channel (54x300s) for a total of 13.5hrs total integration time.
Processing details
Pixinsight
- Calibration, weighting, alignment, integration (drizzle integration vark 1.5), crop
- LinearFit Ha and Oiii maters to Sii
L (Ha)
- EzDecon
- Integer downsample x2
- EzDenoise
- HT stretch
- Curves
- LHE with background mask
- EzStarReduction
SHO
- Integer downsample x2
- ChannelCombination
- HT stretch
- EzStarReduction
- LRGB combination with L
- Curves and masks for color adjustments
- EnhanceDarkStructures script
Photoshop
- Enhanced saturation and contrast
- Non linear noise reduction protecting stars
- various curves, contrast and color adjustments with masks
