IC1396 Elephant’s Trunk nebula in HA

This is a “quickie” of IC1396 the Elephant’s trunk nebula with minor noise reduction and stretching.

The Elephant’s Trunk nebula is a concentration of interstellar gas and dust within the much larger ionized gas region IC 1396 located in the constellation Cepheus about 2,400 light-years away from Earth. The piece of the nebula shown here is the dark, dense globule IC 1396A; it is commonly called the Elephant’s Trunk nebula because of its appearance at visible light wavelengths, where there is a dark patch with a bright, sinuous rim. The bright rim is the surface of the dense cloud that is being illuminated and ionized by a very bright, massive star (HD 206267) that is just to the west of IC 1396A. (In the Figure above, the massive star is just to the left of the edge of the image.) The entire IC 1396 region is ionized by the massive star, except for dense globules that can protect themselves from the star’s harsh ultraviolet rays.

The Elephant’s Trunk nebula is now thought to be a site of star formation, containing several very young (less than 100,000 yr) stars that were discovered in infrared images in 2003. Two older (but still young, a couple of million years, by the standards of stars, which live for billions of years) stars are present in a small, circular cavity in the head of the globule. Winds from these young stars may have emptied the cavity.

The combined action of the light from the massive star ionizing and compressing the rim of the cloud, and the wind from the young stars shifting gas from the center outward lead to very high compression in the Elephant’s Trunk nebula. This pressure has triggered the current generation of protostars.

Technical details :

Sky-Watcher 80ED Pro Black Diamond
SBIG 8300M
HEQ5 Pro
Guiding camera: QHY CCD QHY5 mono
Filters: Baader 7nm Ha 2”
Accessories: Starlight Xpress Starlight Xpress FW 5*2”
Resolution: 2504×3314

Dates: Oct. 14, 2014
Locations: Home obs
Frames: Baader 7nm Ha 2”: 30×600″ -5C bin 1×1
Integration: 5.0 hours

Darks: ~20
Flats: ~20
Bias: ~100

Avg. Moon age: 20.49 days
Avg. Moon phase: 67.31%
Bortle Dark-Sky Scale: 8.00
Mean FWHM: 1.60
Temperature: 14.00
RA center: 323.617 degrees
DEC center: 57.559 degrees
Pixel scale: 1.856 arcsec/pixel
Orientation: -89.351 degrees
Field radius: 1.071 degrees

NGC7380 – The Wizard nebula in HA

NGC7380 Wizard nebula in HA
NGC7380 Wizard Nebula in HA

NGC 7380 (also known as the Wizard Nebula) is an open cluster discovered by Caroline Herschel in 1787. William Herschel included his sister’s discovery in his catalogue and labelled it H VIII.77. It is also known as 142 in the 1959 Sharpless catalogue (Sh2-142). This reasonably large nebula is located in Cepheus. It is extremely difficult to observe visually, usually requiring very dark skies and an O-III filter.

Technical Details
Sky-Watcher 80ED Pro Black Diamond
SBIG 8300M
HEQ5 Pro
QHY CCD QHY5 mono
Frames: Baader 7nm Ha 2”: 34×1200″ -5C bin 1×1
Starlight Xpress Starlight Xpress FW 5*2″
3003×2166
Dates: Oct. 5, 2014
Locations: Home obs
Integration: 11.3 hours

Darks: ~10
Flats: ~10
Bias: ~100

Avg. Moon age: 10.86 days
Avg. Moon phase: 83.71%
Mean SQM: 17.00
Mean FWHM: 1.50
Temperature: 15.00
RA center: 341.867 degrees
DEC center: 58.074 degrees
Orientation: 179.381 degrees
Field radius: 0.956 degrees

My first CCD attempt is the NGC7380 The wizard nebula in HA (for now) 🙂 It took 4 nights to gather the data, as I am still battling with meridian flips, ADU’s, Dark noise and the rest of the CCD parameters…

Enjoy!

Get the altitude of any location – Astrophotography

One the gazillion little data that you need to have, in order to adjust the telescope mount in order to track celestial objects correctly, is the altitude of the location you are setting the gear up.

So here is a handy website that helps you determine the altitude of a given location

http://www.altitude.nu/

Seems quite accurate.

Galaxy M101 – Location Greece Mount Taygetus

The famous M101 Galaxy!

M101 Galaxy
M101 Galaxy

Technical details :

Contains: NGC 5477, NGC 5473, M 101, NGC 5457
Imaging telescopes or lenses: Sky-Watcher 80ED Pro Black Diamond
Imaging cameras: Canon 350D
Guiding telescopes or lenses: Sky-Watcher 80ED Pro Black Diamond
Software: Pleiades Astrophoto PixInsight
Resolution: 1016×936

Dates: July 24, 2014
Frames: 30×243″ ISO400
Integration: 2.0 hours
Darks: ~10
Flats: ~30
Bias: ~30

Avg. Moon age: 26.86 days
Avg. Moon phase: 7.86%
Bortle Dark-Sky Scale: 2.00
Temperature: 22.00
RA center: 210.790 degrees
DEC center: 54.363 degrees
Pixel scale: 4.405 arcsec/pixel
Orientation: -89.651 degrees
Field radius: 0.845 degrees