Very Amateur Astronomy

I think I’m running out of objects to image in Cygnus now! This one is the Crescent nebula, a bright emission nebula standing out from a region full of faint nebulosity. It is a target and indeed a region that would benefit from a modified camera, something I really must get done. However I am pleased with the result from what is essentially quite a short total exposure, if I get another night this week I may have to grab another couple of hours to bring out the fainter background structure.

It would be nice to try this area with the 250mm reflector to, higher resolution should bring out the very faint bubble nebula which is also in this field, but invisible at this scale and resolution.

I’m running out of ideas for widefield nebula to image at this time of year, any suggestions gladly welcomed, perhaps a field trip for a go at the Rho Ophiuchus Nebula.

Imaging Equipment

• William Optics ZS66SD
• William Optics MkII 0.8 Field Flattener
• Canon EOS 1000D (unmodified)
• Astronomic CLS CCD Filter

Guiding and Mount

• Vixen A70LF Refractor
• Modified Philips SPC900NC Webcam
• IR/UV Cut Filter
• 0.6x Focal Reducer
• Celestron CGEM Mount

Exposures

• 32 x 5 minutes (160 minutes total)
• 29 x bias
• 29 x dark
• 31 x flat

The images were calibrated and debayered in Iris then aligned, stacked and processed in Pixinsight.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 4th, 2010 at 5:48 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.