Category: Deep Sky

On Wednesday, March 3, I had my first chance to do astrophotography in about six weeks. Orion and the Orion nebula moved three hours closer to the Sun in those six weeks so I wanted to work on that while I could.

This is a composite image of the Orion Nebula (M42 and M43) and adjacent Running Man Nebula (NGC 1977) taken with my 11″ SCT (Elf) and ZWO ASI 294MC Pro at the River Ridge Observatory. This is a composite made from 15 120 second, 15 60 second, 30 30 second, and 30 8 second images. Capture was done with SharpCap Pro, stacked with Deep Sky Stacker, and processing done with Photoshop CC.

This image is on its side to fit most monitors better. This is normally roughly vertical when you look at it. Tilt your head to the left for a better look at the Running Man but in this orientation the main attraction looks a bit like a turkey I think.

In his most recent The Night Sky blog, Darrell Heath talked about NGC 2392 aka The Lion Nebula so I decided to try to image it with the RRT. It’s small (48 arcseconds) so I figured that system which is a 12″ SCT at prime focus which I think is a 3000mm focal length would be a good fit. The RRT has a monochrome camera so I used its filters to create a color composite. The alignment wasn’t perfect, the stars show some chromatic error, but the image shows the major features of this planetary nebula.

This is the Gamma Cassiopeia Nebula, aka IC 63 (top) and IC 59 (right of center). The dinner plate of a star is second magnitude Navi, the central peak in the W of the constellation of Cassiopeia. Notice this nebula looks like a caricature of a Guy Fawkes mask about to eat the star. Who says I don’t have an imagination?

Anyway, I haven’t had a picture to share in four weeks and decided to inflict this one on you even though it’s not too good. In early December I managed to get four five minute images before clouds happened. I decided to try it again Friday night but clouds interfered again after the fifth frame. So this is just 45 minutes of data.

This nebula is actually near Kavi and is slowly being dissipated by it. The top one (IC 63) is also called “the Ghost Nebula” maybe because in another orientation you could imagine someone with a sheet over their head. As far as I can tell, the silly nickname for IC 59 is IC 59.