I’ve already posted a couple images from Friday November 7, here is the last one. This is the Elephant’s Trunk Nebula (or IC 1396). I’ve been trying to make this presentable, it needs more data but it’s my first attempt at it. This was a total of 50 minutes integration with the 11″ and Hyperstar. That’s the trunk coming up from the bottom. I’ll keep working on it.
Later Friday night, I shot this, my first attempt at the Orion Nebula (and nearby Running Man Nebula) for the season. I used the same 11″ SCT with Hyperstar but switched from the light pollution filter to a dual narrowband. This was 60 sixty second images combined and all post processing was done in Photoshop. I need to revisit this, due to its high dynamic range I could shoot some 30 second images and 120 second images and merge with these.
Friday night I went up to the River Ridge Observatory to image some objects. I decided to start with the Iris Nebula (NGC 7023) in Cepheus which I have attempted twice before. This time I was able to take longer subs that were later combined. Each was 5 minutes long and I also lowered my gain from 300 to 200 because this object has a lot of dynamic range and I didn’t want to lose that. This was taken with my C11 and Hyperstar shooting at f/1.9 with a light pollution filter. In all 20 5 minute images were combined and all processing was done in Photoshop. I think I’ve finally gotten the three dimensional image I’ve been looking for, the nebula seems to float above the stars.
