Mike Lewis
Staff Member
So my whimsical title refers to the Wizard Nebula, shown in the upper left of this image, and a Sharpless Catalogue object, Sh2-139, in the lower right of the image, which for the purposes of the title of the post vaguely resembles a fireball 
The Wizard Nebula is an area of active gas and dust surrounding the open star cluster NGC 7380, located approximately 7200 light years away. Sh2-139, a lesser known and less frequently imaged object, is thought to be ionized by 2 supergiant stars and lies at least 10,700 light years distant.
This is the first image captured with my upgraded remote setup in Arizona. The data was taken partially in person while I was still there and then also remotely once I had returned home. The modifications to my setup added a through the mount power cable and a power/usb distribution box, plus a rotator to the image train. The modifications went smoothly,but there have been some guiding issues since the upgrade. I initially assumed it was related to my changes, but my friend has also been experiencing the same issues so for now it represents a bit of a mystery. The issues have been well in excess of any guiding problems I have previously seen in my ~3 years of imaging remotely from there, and in this case caused me to have to discard a third of the 12 hours of data I collected on these targets. The rotator was helpful in composing this frame, and in spite of the tracking issues, I was still able to make what I consider to be a very pleasing image out of the remaining 8 hours of data collected. The palette is a modified SHO palette, with red mapped to Sulphur emissions, Green mapped to Hydrogen emission,s and Blue mapped to Oxygen emissions. The channels have been normalized to limit the green and allow the other colors to show through.
In this image narrowband filters were used to capture the nebulae and RGB filters were used to capture the stars. This was originally considered to be test data, so no bias or flat frames were taken, but eventually I decided to process it, and it would seem for this image at least, those support frames are not greatly missed.
As always comments and critiques are most welcome.
ML
Equipment:
QHY268M Camera @ -5C and
Gain:56 Offset:20
Software Bisque MyT Mount
Stellarvue SVQ100 Astrograph Refractor, 580mm @ f/5.8
Antlia Pro Filters (3nm narrowband plus LRGB)
Orion ST-80 Guidescope/ASI290MM
Pegasus Astro Ultimate Powerbox v2
Pegasus Astro Falcon Rotator
Software:
Pixinsight Commercial Version 1.8
Lightroom CC
Photoshop CC
N.I.N.A. Control Software
Star XTerminator (Russell Croman)
Noise XTerminator (Russell Croman)
Light Frames:
Ha - 32 x 360 secs ( 3 hrs 12 mins)
OIII - 23 x 360 secs (2 hrs 18 mins)
SII - 24 x 360 secs (2 hrs and 24 mins)
Red: 18 x 30 secs (9 mins)
Green: 14 x 30 secs (7 mins)
Blue: 16 x 30 secs (8 mins)
8 hrs 18 mins total
Dark Frames:
10 x 30 secs (5 mins)
10 x 360 secs (1 hr 20 mins)
No Bias Frames
No Flat Frames
The Wizard Nebula is an area of active gas and dust surrounding the open star cluster NGC 7380, located approximately 7200 light years away. Sh2-139, a lesser known and less frequently imaged object, is thought to be ionized by 2 supergiant stars and lies at least 10,700 light years distant.This is the first image captured with my upgraded remote setup in Arizona. The data was taken partially in person while I was still there and then also remotely once I had returned home. The modifications to my setup added a through the mount power cable and a power/usb distribution box, plus a rotator to the image train. The modifications went smoothly,but there have been some guiding issues since the upgrade. I initially assumed it was related to my changes, but my friend has also been experiencing the same issues so for now it represents a bit of a mystery. The issues have been well in excess of any guiding problems I have previously seen in my ~3 years of imaging remotely from there, and in this case caused me to have to discard a third of the 12 hours of data I collected on these targets. The rotator was helpful in composing this frame, and in spite of the tracking issues, I was still able to make what I consider to be a very pleasing image out of the remaining 8 hours of data collected. The palette is a modified SHO palette, with red mapped to Sulphur emissions, Green mapped to Hydrogen emission,s and Blue mapped to Oxygen emissions. The channels have been normalized to limit the green and allow the other colors to show through.
In this image narrowband filters were used to capture the nebulae and RGB filters were used to capture the stars. This was originally considered to be test data, so no bias or flat frames were taken, but eventually I decided to process it, and it would seem for this image at least, those support frames are not greatly missed.
As always comments and critiques are most welcome.
ML
Equipment:
QHY268M Camera @ -5C and
Gain:56 Offset:20
Software Bisque MyT Mount
Stellarvue SVQ100 Astrograph Refractor, 580mm @ f/5.8
Antlia Pro Filters (3nm narrowband plus LRGB)
Orion ST-80 Guidescope/ASI290MM
Pegasus Astro Ultimate Powerbox v2
Pegasus Astro Falcon Rotator
Software:
Pixinsight Commercial Version 1.8
Lightroom CC
Photoshop CC
N.I.N.A. Control Software
Star XTerminator (Russell Croman)
Noise XTerminator (Russell Croman)
Light Frames:
Ha - 32 x 360 secs ( 3 hrs 12 mins)
OIII - 23 x 360 secs (2 hrs 18 mins)
SII - 24 x 360 secs (2 hrs and 24 mins)
Red: 18 x 30 secs (9 mins)
Green: 14 x 30 secs (7 mins)
Blue: 16 x 30 secs (8 mins)
8 hrs 18 mins total
Dark Frames:
10 x 30 secs (5 mins)
10 x 360 secs (1 hr 20 mins)
No Bias Frames
No Flat Frames
