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.
After finishing with the Crescent Nebula I moved to the Tulip Nebula. Sharpless 101 (Sh2-101) is a H II region[1] emission nebula located in the constellation Cygnus. It is sometimes also called the Tulip Nebula because it appears to resemble the outline of a tulip when imaged photographically. It was catalogued by astronomer Stewart Sharpless in his 1959 catalog of nebulae. It lies at a distance of about 6,000 light-years (5.7×1016 km; 3.5×1016 mi) from Earth.
