New Image: Sh2-157 The Lobster Claw Nebula its and Cool Neighbors

[Juno16]

Hi All,

I was so fortunate to get a few semi-clear nights this week and enjoyed every minute of the three nights (mostly on the couch napping).
Guiding was great and only a few frames were ruined by passing clouds.

Moved from an imaging laptop to a mini PC and except for a few growing pains, it was relatively smooth and a gigantic improvement!
It’s a Mele Overclock 3C and blows the old laptop away as far as performance. It also has active cooling which I hope helps in my extreme summer temperatures.
My setup is very much simplified.

First pass with this data and I’ve settled (for now) with a simple workflow.
Not really bold and “ In your face”, but nice subtle natural color and detail.
This is decent data which makes things easier. I will work with the data to see how it looks with different color palettes.

The Lobster Claw Nebula (Sh2-157) is the highlight of this image. But, there is so much more to see!
The Bubble Nebula (NGC 7635), star clusters M52, NGC 7510, and MK50, and emission and reflection nebula NGC 7538 that contains the biggest yet discovered protostar which is about 300 times the size of the Solar System.

I hope you enjoy it!

Jim

[SkyHiker]

Fantastic image Jim, and congrats with your mini PC! It makes the cabling and workflow a lot better.

[Juno16]

Fantastic image Jim, and congrats with your mini PC! It makes the cabling and workflow a lot better.

Thanks Henk!
It’s a very basic process and I’m sure I’ll give it some tweaks soon.
Yeah, the mini PC is great. I never thought I needed one because my laptop worked fine.
The mini PC and other bits of tidying have really simplified my setup and operation.

[StarHugger]

Nice results Jim, cool you got some clear and some knapping too.

Big star 300x 100000au...

What is the diameter of the system estimated at these days , now I'm off to find out!


https://www.universetoday.com/15585/dia ... ar-system/

And according to this diagram its diameter is 200000au

So then 300x200000=60M'au Wow! Now thats a Star!

[Solsearcher]

Beautiful image Jim !!

[Graeme1858]

nice subtle natural color and detail

Indeed Jim. That's a lovely image. Looking forward to seeing what you do with it.

Graeme

[Jockinireland]

Super image Jim. I think sometimes it nice to just go with the simple "natural" colours. I love the images we can get with our little Sharpstars - they really do "punch above their weights".

[MariusD69]

Wonderful image! Very well done, Jim!!

[Juno16]

Nice results Jim, cool you got some clear and some knapping too.

Big star 300x 100000au...

What is the diameter of the system estimated at these days , now I'm off to find out!


https://www.universetoday.com/15585/dia ... ar-system/

And according to this diagram its diameter is 200000au

So then 300x200000=60M'au Wow! Now thats a Star!

Thank you for the nice comments!

It's a biggun for sure. Of course it is still forming, but wouldn't it be cool to be around when it does finally form!

Yeah, space is really awesome!

Beautiful image Jim !!

Thank you much Mike!

nice subtle natural color and detail

Indeed Jim. That's a lovely image. Looking forward to seeing what you do with it.

Graeme

Much appreciated Graeme!
I did quickly mess around with other color palettes and nothing really clicked. I will give it another go soon and do it the right way (and not so quickly).

I am a fan of reds though and this image has multiple areas of interest that to my eye look pleasant naturally, so we will see!

Super image Jim. I think sometimes it nice to just go with the simple "natural" colours. I love the images we can get with our little Sharpstars - they really do "punch above their weights".

Me too David. I tried some quick looks at other coloration and kept gravitating back to my original "quickie" process. So, I decided to go that way for now.
I absolutely love imaging with my Sharpstar 61!
I have the whole setup kind of slicked out and with the addition of the mini PC, setup is a breeze. I don't need to go outside at all after PA'ing.
It did get me into trouble recently though. My first outing after configuring the mini PC I calibrated PHD2 and got a horrible calibration! The GA even reported my DEC backlash at over 16000ms (usually in the 100's). Turns out that I set up the cabling wrong and had a snag when I aimed the scope at the meridian and DEC 0.
I was too lazy to go outside and look!!!!!!
Didn't matter anyway because clouds moved in and I had to pack it up. I just attributed it to a setup error that I made in PHD2 when configuring the mini PC! Live and learn (hopefully)

Thanks for the nice comments!

Wonderful image! Very well done, Jim!!

Hi Marius and thanks you my friend!

[messier 111]

wow , superb image well balance , thx .

[Juno16]

Brightened things up a bit.

[yobbo89]

very nice image, those mini pc,s are very powerfull these days, i have one the size of my hand and it runs games at high frame rates



edit: spelling error xd

[Juno16]

very mice image, those mini pc,s are very powerfull these days, i have one the size of my hand and it runs games at high frame rates

Hi Rob and thanks!

The new mini PC’s are really nice. This one has an overclocked 4 core Celeron cpu, m.2 nvme,16G of DDR4 ram and active cooling.
Cuiv on the YouTube channel says that he ran Pixinsight on this model.

[Mac]

Great image you captured Jim.

I've been thinking about getting one of those miniPC to run Linux on but just haven't made the move. Glad to hear it's working well for you.

[Juno16]

Great image you captured Jim.

I've been thinking about getting one of those miniPC to run Linux on but just haven't made the move. Glad to hear it's working well for you.

Thank you Steve.

I really haven't given a mini PC much thought. My 10+ year old Dell laptop has been doing well. I recently had to replace the fan/cooler assembly ($12 on Ebay), but before I had a chance to use it, I bought the Mele.
It is amazing that so much punch can be packed into such a small form factor. I got the model with active cooling because of my very warm summer nights, but I don't have it mounted to the scope, but rather to the mount.
My only reservation was that if I loose communication, I would be up the creek. After running it all night for three nights in a row, I restarted remote desktop only a few times because of connection latency, but it reconnected quickly and ran well.
I do have TeamViewer ready in the background to auto connect as a backup, but no need so far.
Since I set up every time I image, it has very much streamlined my setup. Cool stuff!

[Ylem]

That's awesome Jim!

[jthommes]

Great image Jim!

Nice to hear that your migration from an imaging laptop went reasonably well. I recently went through such a transition on two pier setups in my observatory. Yep, these new little PC's blow away my older laptops.

[Juno16]

Great image Jim!

Nice to hear that your migration from an imaging laptop went reasonably well. I recently went through such a transition on two pier setups in my observatory. Yep, these new little PC's blow away my older laptops.

Thanks again Jim!
Yes, the mini PC runs things very smoothly.
Plus, since I setup each session, it streamlines my setup, reduces setup time, and is a smaller footprint in the yard.
Are you running ethernet or wifi?

[Mirrorgirl]

Excellent image Jim well done love the red and detail



Rhoda

[Juno16]

Excellent image Jim well done love the red and detail



Rhoda

Thanks Rhoda. I ended up doing a repro in a different color palette. Looks way different!
Either way, I have both.

https://theskysearchers.com/viewtopic.p ... 68#p253868