Flaming Skull Nebula
29-Sep-2022
When stars like the Sun are near end of life, they send their outer layers into space to create glowing clouds of gas, a planetary nebulae. This ejection of mass is uneven, and planetary nebulae can have complex shapes. This dying star is moving rapidly through space, resulting in a long tail of ionized hydrogen gas.
Image:
- 39x 600s 6nm H-α
- 41x 600s 6nm O-III
Total integration 13 hours 20 minutes. Focal length: 840mm
Hardware:
- Skywatcher Esprit 120ED
- Skywatcher 120ED field flattener
- Skywatcher EQ8-Rh mount
- QSI 683-ws8 Camera @ -15°C
- Astronomik 6nm H-α, 6nm O-III filters
- Starlight Xpress Lodestar X2 Autoguider
- Starlight Instruments Posi-drive focuser
Location:
- Exposed over 7 nights between 8th July to 30th July 2022
- Orange zone in Brisbane, Australia. (Bortle 7)
Software:
- Planning & camera alignment with Aladin 10
- Captured with TheSkyX Professional
- Guiding with PHD2
- PixInsight: Calibrate, align, integrate, dymanic background extraction, HOO combination, noise reduction, star removal and re-combined as greyscale, histogram, curves, crop.