Crab Nebula in December 13 2023
Cold clear night and near New Moon I was able to compile 36 frames at 240 seconds for a total of 2hr 24min.
The crop was completed from the 2x resolution render .
Category: Nebulas
Once again returning to a favorite but also very challenging target due to the contrast of bright stars and faint Nebulae. Among one of the closest star clusters at a distance of 440 light years off, the Pleiades are a personal favorite for a celestial marvel easily seen with the unaided eye. I did short exposures with a bit less than two hours integrated into this image taken 11/16/2023.
The last time was in 2019 shown here>
Image generated from 2 hours 35 minutes of 300 second subs. NGC 6914 is a reflection nebula located approximately 6,000 light-years away in the constellation of Cygnus.
From the web:
“A study in contrasts, this colorful skyscape features stars, dust, and glowing gas in the vicinity of NGC 6914. The complex of reflection nebulae lies some 6,000 light-years away, toward the high-flying northern constellation Cygnus and the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy. Obscuring interstellar dust clouds appear in silhouette while reddish hydrogen emission nebulae, along with the dusty blue reflection nebulae, fill the cosmic canvas. Ultraviolet radiation from the massive, hot, young stars of the extensive Cygnus OB2 association ionize the region’s atomic hydrogen gas, producing the characteristic red glow as protons and electrons recombine. Embedded Cygnus OB2 stars also provide the blue starlight strongly reflected by the dust clouds.”
The full frame and a crop of the reflection nebula area.
A very challenging target for my setup. The air was a bit unsettled and tracking was problematic most likely because of the location in the sky of this run. Tossed out four or five frames with satellite tracks through them and six or so low scoring frames. This is compiled from 26 five minute subs.
A dim red emission nebula with two blue reflection nebulas along the edge, this first image was pushed hard in processing. I have included a less processed version to get an idea of how difficult this can be to resolve a decent output.
The moon is half full but otherwise a break in the clouds and smoke allowed me to get out to the telescope. Calm air helped to give nice guiding and after tossing some early frames with not so dark background and four or five of the lowest scoring frames in Deep Sky Stacker left me with 3hr 12 minutes of 240 sec. sub frame data to integrate. Again as I have been doing lately I used the 2x drizzle function in stacking for cleaner resolution after downscaling in Photoshop.
4000 light years away and around 15 light years across, this is a star nursery area showing both emission and reflection nebula characteristics.
The Iris Nebula is a hauntingly beautiful target. I was able to get well over three hours total of 240 second sub frames. Stacked with “2x drizzle” and fresh calibration flat frames along with bias frames. Ran two different post processing runs and this one was the one I liked best. As always when you click the image below it will open up the full resolution image.
A fun and gorgeous object to image! I ran 180 second subs on the fairly bright target for almost 2 and 1/2 hours to get this result. Near new moon on a nice summer night. Stacking with “2x drizzle” brought more detail I think than previous attempts.
Another go at this nebula that is hard to pull out of the starfield with my current setup. The “Wizard” profile is not easily discerned in this image and the distinguishing feature of the pointed hat is not evident here to be honest. In any case I ran 240 second subs with nearly 3 hours of integration to produce this version. Pushing the post processing as far as I could makes for some funky star artifacts. One near full field and one rotated crop image:
A very low target in the Southern sky from my location, the Lagoon Nebula is rather bright so I went with 180 second exposures at 800 asa. I stacked something like 38 subs or about 1.9 hours of data. Tracking was unusually poor with steady periodic swings. Some of this may be from the low physical orientation of the mount and some may be from the atmosphere although the sky in general seemed to have stable air. In another move that I have not done much if at all in this blog, I used the “2x drizzle” function while stacking the sub exposures. This gives an output with double the resolution. After initial conversion to 16 bit the image scale is reduced back to normal scale and the effect is a sharper image to start off with.
Half of the “Heart and Soul Nebula” in this frame from a 3 hour run on a dark sky night.
From the internet….. https://www.constellation-guide.com/soul-nebula/ :
“The Soul Nebula (Westerhout 5) is an emission nebula located in the constellation Cassiopeia. It forms a famous pair known as the Heart and Soul with the neighbouring Heart Nebula (IC 1805). The Soul Nebula is sometimes also known as the Embryo Nebula or IC 1848, which is a designation used for the open star cluster embedded within the nebula.
The Heart and Soul Nebulae complex spans an area about 300 light years across and is a vast star-forming region illuminated by the light of the young stars surrounded by star-forming clouds of dust and gas. The two large clouds are separated by only 2.5 degrees and physically connected by a bridge of gas. The stars in the region are less than a few million years old and are only beginning their life. For comparison, our Sun has been around for almost 5 billion years.”
