Soul Nebula

[drja...@aol.com]

The Soul 'Nebula' is actually a collection of nebulae and star clusters, including IC1848, three quarters across to the right of the attached image. The complex is a star forming region in the Constellation of Cassiopeia, about 7500 light years away and about 100 light years across. Many stars are only a few million years old, (compared to our Sun at 4.6bn), (all Wikipedia). These show up as the hot blue stars in the attached image.

The image below is based on data taken on 6 & 7 April 2026, using the f5 Dwarf Mini Smart one shot colour camera, 30mm aperture and 150mm focal length. The first night captured narrowband Ha data using the built in duoband filter, and the second night captured full RGB.

The narrowband data were stacked and denoised using Dwarfvision, the built in Dwarf app. Stars were then extracted from the overall narowband data image using StarNet in Pixinsight, to leave a starless image. Some further processing was carried out on the starless image to remove gradients and bring out the nebulosity.

Stars were also removed from the RGB image. The RGB stars were then combined and aligned with the processed narrowband data, using Pixinsight. The result is a combination of Ha nebulosity and RGB stars as here.

Night 1 captured 60 x 60 second narrowband filtered exposures at gain 60, and night 2 captured 30 RGB frames of 60 seconds also at gain 60.

James

[Tim Coskun]

Hi James

That's a lovely image of the Soul Nebula. An amazing result for 1.5 hours of imaging time if my maths is correct. It's a large object probably well suited to your imaging equipment and the definition of the nebula and the stars is excellent. Also, I love your colour palette - I usually use the Hubble palette for narrowband imaging which renders in reds/oranges, greens and blues but I think yours is more subtle in this case and really suits the subject matter. Great work!

Best wishes

Tim C

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Sent: Saturday, May 16, 2026 3:04 PM
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Subject: [croydonastro - 8238] Soul Nebula

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[drja...@aol.com]

Thank you Tim.

It was 90 minutes total exposure over two nights.  That was the first time I have imaged an object in two sessions.  I noticed that the stacking affected the edges more than usual for one session, maybe as the tracking isn't up to the standards of better mounts.  Not a significant issue though.

For me the big advantage of the system is not lugging 20kgs of equipment into the garden only to have to pack it up prematurely when the weather isn't good enough.  Something 'Smart' under 1kg, plus a tripod, is not a big deal if clouds come in and stop everything.  What I'm finding is that the equipment just does its thing and the creativity comes in the processing.   

What's helpful is that there is a growing community of Dwarf users with identical equipment.  You see the impressive end results, often with quite a detailed explanation of what the processing sequence was and you can follow suit.

In this case, the image is the duoband filter combined narrow band Ha/Oiii, without attempting to separate out the two channels.  Looking at three channel images it seems that the reddest parts of the image are the Ha and the less intense central area is the Oiii.  It should be possible to produce a proper HaOO palette image as other Dwarf users have.  I quite liked the red version though and stopped while I was ahead.

James

Sent from my iPad

On 22 May 2026, at 15:26, Tim Coskun <tcos...@gmail.com> wrote:



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