Angel Nebula

[Bill Richards]

The Angel Nebula (aka NGC2170) is a dusty reflection nebula and stellar nursery about 2700 light-years away. It's known for its dramatic appearance, where blue and orange hues intertwine, set against a backdrop of dark interstellar dust and glowing gas. The nebula reflects the light of nearby young, hot stars, giving it a bluish hue, while the surrounding clouds are illuminated with warmer tones from nearby stars.

This is the result of nearly 9 hours of exposure time taken on 2025-02-02 and 2025-12-18.

Equipment and Software:
=======================
Mount: 10Micron GM1000HPS
Telescope: Celestron EdgeHD 8 w/0.7x focal reducer
Auto-Focuser: Rigel Systems nFOCUS
Imaging Camera: ASI2600MC-Pro
Guide Camera: ASI174MM-Mini on OAG
Imaging S/W: NINA
Guiding S/W: PHD2
Image Processing S/W: PixInsight

Exposure Details:
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Camera Temperature -15C
Bias: 50
Gain: 100
176 x 180s
Plus 32x Darks, Flats, and Dark Flats

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[JimFox]

Love the description Bill, and the image is stunning! Really awesome work on your part. This isn't the easiest of nebulas, but you captured it well and have great detail and separation. Like the how the dark nebula is standing out in front.

 

[Comet Hunter]

Outstanding

 

[Bill Richards]

Love the description Bill, and the image is stunning! Really awesome work on your part. This isn't the easiest of nebulas, but you captured it well and have great detail and separation. Like the how the dark nebula is standing out in front.

Thanks, Jim. Truth be told, I'm not pleased with the result on this one. I was hoping for much better given that I had 9 full hours of usable data. I struggled mightily with the stretching step, trying multiple times with regular Histrogram Stretch, GHS, and the new Veralux Hypermetric stretching script. I just couldn't achieve the result I was seeking. There are fuzzy halos around the brighter stars (even though the skies were clear), and those halos sometimes have red/blue color gradients. And the bottom of the image has a blu-ish tint that I could not eliminate. Lots of frustrating hours went into this and I'm still unhappy with it.

 

[Bill Richards]

I spent a good part of the day reprocessing this image and (I think) produced a slightly better result. The dust clouds surrounding the Angel Nebula stand out a bit more, the color gradients in the hazy star halos aren't as prominent, the bluish tint at the bottom of the image is greatly reduced, and there is less splotchiness overall.

 

[Mike Lewis]

Excellent Bill! I just finished this one myself. It is a very interesting target but definitely a little challenging to process. I like your 2nd rendition.

ML

 

[Bill Richards]

OK, one more iteration, this time with the just-released Multiscale Adaptive Stretch process in Pixinsight. I think it did a fantastic job of stretching the image and I only had to tweak it a little bit afterwards.