nebulae

Galaxies 23 March 2023

M81 / M82 Group and IFN with Samyang 135mm

The M81 and M82 galaxies in Ursa Major showing the background Integrated Flux Nebula. These are a well known and popular pair of galaxies and can be seen with binoculars. I’ve imaged them here in a very wide field with a DSLR camera lens – the Samyang 135mm connected to a G2-8300 CCD camera and filter assembly using Astrodon LRGB filters The cloudy dust that is visible is not passing cloud! Rather, it is the extremely faint dust and gas that exists in the space between the galaxies – in intergalactic space. Hence it is called the Integrated Flux Nebula or IFN. It is extremely faint and is only visible with very long exposures and integration times. Careful processing is needed not to inadvertently cut it out of the image. M81 and M82 and IFN Technical Data Imaged in my back yard in Nottingham in March 2020 with Samyang 135mm…

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Open Clusters 22 March 2023

M52 with FSQ85 and G2-8300 Camera

M52 Open Cluster in Cassiopeia M52 is a fabulous open cluster in Cassiopeia. It is set against a huge amount of nebulosity that spans across the constellations of Cassiopeia and Cepheus. In this image The Bubble Nebula can be seen at the four o’clock position with respect to M52 and many other objects in the Sharpless Catalogue of nebulae are also visible. These are detailed in the annotated version of the image below. The square red box on the finder chart on the right represents the image Technical Information Imaged from my backyard in Nottingham, UK on 28 November 2021 with a FSQ85 refractor and a Moravian G2-8300 cooled CCD camera with Astrodon HaRGB filters on my MESU200 mount guided with OAG.All image data is binned 1×1:Ha> 9 x 300s ; Red > 9 x 300s ; Green 9 x 300s ; Blue > 9 x 300sImage capture is with NINA and processing in PixInsight…

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Nebulae 19 December 2022

Sh2-171 with FSQ85 Telescope and G2-8300 CCD camera

Sh2-171 in Cepheus Sh2-171 is a star forming region in the constellation of Cepheus in the far northern hemisphere of the sky. Imaged here with Takahashi FSQ85 and G2-8300 with Astrodon HaRGB filters.

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Nebulae 22 March 2023

A Set of Images of NGC7000, The North American Nebula. Is Ha data worth it?

HaRGB A perennial favourite object to image in the summer and autumn months in the Northern Hemisphere. I’ve imaged this target with multiple equipment combinations over the years. For example, in One Shot Colour (OSC), in widefield and in a very wide field.As part of the image I used my existing Ha dataset from 2018/2019 which consists of 48 x 600 second exposures. I discuss capture of this image here. 48 x 600s Ha Image I then captured the RGB dataset in October 2021. This image is my first image set that I captured using the excellent NINA (Nighttime Imaging “N” Astronomy) imaging software. I captured four hours of RGB data through Astrodon 31mm E series Gen 2 filters binned at 1×1. This consisted of 300 second exposures. Seeing and transparency were not good but clear nights have been very infrequent in the UK in the past six months so I…

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Nebulae 5 January 2021

The Heart Nebula – IC1805

A famous emission nebula in the Northern constellation of Cassiopeia, the Heart Nebula is a huge star forming region located about 8000 light years away, out in the Perseus Arm of our galaxy. It is often imaged as a pair of nebulae alongside the Soul Nebula as the famous Heart and Soul Nebulae. I have imaged them together here as well as The Soul nebula here, presented on its own. It is also known as IC1805 and Sharpless S2-190. The Heart Nebula It is a beautiful nebula and I have even seen it portrayed on Valentine cards 🙂 Technical Details Imaged from my back yard in Nottingham, UK on 20 December 2020. Seeing conditions and sky transparency were reasonable. I used Takahashi FSQ85 refractor at native focal length and a QHY268C OSC CMOS camera. I took 42 x 180s exposures and the data was captured with Sequence Generator Pro. Processed…

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