Scary Face Nebula - SH2-52

[CoolhandJo (Paul)]

Sometimes it pays to check you "Tonight's Best" in your sky App! I didn't know this existed and was scrolling through tonight's best on Asiair and stumbled upon this amazing Nebula! Looking suspiciously like Wilson from Castaway, the scary face in the center of the image is looking down fiercely,.
This is almost 17 hours taken with 533MM pro on an AM3 using Askar V at 600mm FL. I'm liking my Mono Cam and Antlia filters a lot. Processed in SHO with Pixinsight in Bortle 5 skys.

Astrobin high res here https://astrob.in/lcc0w7/B/

[TrevorW]

Very nice FOV and nice colours not to oversaturated

[strongmanmike (Michael)]

Good looking colour palette there Paul with your usual nice processing.. and yes, we don't see too many images of this little bugger and I too have immediately thought of Wilson every time I've seen it

Needs to be called the Wilson Nebula

Mike

[strongmanmike (Michael)]

And of course, it could be Groot or Baby Groot, from Guardians of the Galaxy

Mike

[CoolhandJo (Paul)]

Originally Posted by TrevorW

Very nice FOV and nice colours not to oversaturated

Thanks Trevor. Strange with this the more data I added the darker the detail became! And the colours didn't need saturation boost.

Originally Posted by strongmanmike

Good looking colour palette there Paul with your usual nice processing.. and yes, we don't see too many images of this little bugger and I too have immediately thought of Wilson every time I've seen it

Needs to be called the Wilson Nebula

Mike

Yes lol . Thanks Mike

Originally Posted by strongmanmike

And of course, it could be Groot or Baby Groot, from Guardians of the Galaxy



Mike

Oh yeah! Groot!

[Dave882 (David)]

Yeah that’s really nice mate. Never really seen much of this one. Nice catch!

[Ryderscope (Rodney)]

Thank you for posting this unusual object Paul. An excellent result

[AlexN]

Lovely mate - I'm about to make the jump back to a mono camera for my 2nd rig I think... I shoot primarily narrowband, and while dual narrowband filters are awesome, they are not the same beast!

Well done on a very rarely imaged target!

[Nikolas (Nik)]

Awesome mate but it's actually called SH 2-52 the 2 is important as I couldn';t find it anywhere till I did a bigger search. Love it

[Startrek (Martin)]

Nice image and great to see something new
Your processing has given this image a dark contrast and a “spooky look”
Well done !!

Martin

[CoolhandJo (Paul)]

Originally Posted by Startrek

Nice image and great to see something new
Your processing has given this image a dark contrast and a “spooky look”
Well done !!

Martin

thanks Martin! The more data i added the "darker it looked" there is a lot of dark nebula/dust up there that gets richer as the data unfolds.

Originally Posted by Nikolas

Awesome mate but it's actually called SH 2-52 the 2 is important as I couldn';t find it anywhere till I did a bigger search. Love it

Oops. thanks for pointing that out.

Originally Posted by AlexN

Lovely mate - I'm about to make the jump back to a mono camera for my 2nd rig I think... I shoot primarily narrowband, and while dual narrowband filters are awesome, they are not the same beast!

Well done on a very rarely imaged target!

Thanks Alex. TBH the increase in quality is not as great as one thinks. I was surprised. But integration time is cut down for certain. also, colour noise is greatly reduced.

Originally Posted by Ryderscope

Thank you for posting this unusual object Paul. An excellent result

thanks!

Originally Posted by Dave882

Yeah that’s really nice mate. Never really seen much of this one. Nice catch!

Thanks !

[AlexN]

Originally Posted by CoolhandJo

Thanks Alex. TBH the increase in quality is not as great as one thinks. I was surprised. But integration time is cut down for certain. also, colour noise is greatly reduced.

Yeah... I used separate 7nm Ha and OIII filters with my QHY8 in 2008, then went to the SBIG ST8, then ST10XME with SHO filters, then went back to a colour camera, then got an SBIG ST8300M that I had from 2011 through to 2023, I just got annoyed with the weather last October/November/December, when I couldn't for the life of me make a full colour image, because the weather would turn bad for nearly 3 or 4 weeks at a time, and I'd have L, R, G, but no B... I think in those 3 months, I achieved 1 LRGB image of M45 (much less integration than I wanted), other than that I had 8hrs of M78 L that I never got any RGB data for at all... I got really mad and sold the mono camera in favor of a an OSC camera.... and largely, I've been perfectly happy with it.. My only issue is that I find myself having to capture 15~30hr data sets in Ha/OIII to get a reasonable image when I could have done it in 3hrs Ha, 5hrs OIII with a mono camera.

I've been toying with the idea of a mono camera just for narrowband imaging, and having the OSC camera for everything else... I know the difference isn't THAT massive, but I find the data from a mono narrowband image is FAR easier to work with than OSC dual narrowband (Especially now that I have Ha/OIII and SII/OIII, I'm looking at 40hr integrations to get a decent amount of data to build an SHO image...

I'm toying with the idea of a 533... The options are tricky... I love my 294, but its not without its issues, and I don't think that I want to deal with them in 2 different cameras, the 533 sensor is a little small for my liking (especially with my 840mm focal length), but the 571 is INCREDIBLY expensive once you get a 7pos filter wheel full of filters...

I wouldn't mind finding a used KAF8300M or KAI11002M camera...

SO many options, I typically find it too difficult to make a decision haha