Revisiting the Lagoon Nebula with a new telescope.
10-Jun-2016
I was lucky enough to snag a second hand 900mm refractor at a good price. I needed a bright target to test it with. The Lagoon Nebula is a giant interstellar cloud around 4077 light years away, classified as an emission nebula and as an H II region.
Image:
- 66x 300s Luminance bin1x1 + 20 flat + 50x dark + 120x bias
- 16x 150s Red bin2x2 + 15 flat + 50x dark + 120x bias
- 14x 150s Green bin2x2 + 15 flat + 50x dark + 120x bias
- 11x 150s Blue bin2x2 + 15 flat + 50x dark + 120x bias
Total exposure 7 hours 12 minutes.
Hardware:
- Skywatcher Black Diamond ED120
- SkyWatcher EQ8 Pro Mount
- QSI 683-ws Camera @ -15°C
- Astronomik Typ 2c LRGB filters
- Starlight Xpress Lodestar X2 Autoguider
- Innovations Foresight On Axis Guider
Location:
- Green zone in Brisbane, Australia. (Bortle 7)
- Imaged during new moon with good seeing.
Software:
- Planning & camera alignment with Aladin 9
- Captured with AstroArt 6
- Guiding with PHD2 + PHD_Dither
- CCDInspector: Image analysis & rejection
- CCDStack 2+: Calibrate, align, stack, deconvolution, combine RGB.
- Photoshop CC: Reduce noise, high pass filter, minimum filter, shadows/highlights, levels, curves, combine L+RGB.