Seagull Nebula
19-Jan-2017
The Seagull Nebula a region of nebulosity that lies 1820 light years away, along the border between the constellations Monoceros and Canis Major. It includes the neighboring regions of star clusters, dust clouds and reflection nebulae centered around IC 2177.
This image is a narrowband presentation of hydrogen, sulfur and oxygen emission lines, mapped to red, yellow and blue respectively.
Image:
- 14x 600s 6nm H-alpha + 12 flat + 50x dark + 120x bias
- 11x 600s 6nm SII + 12 flat + 50x dark + 120x bias
- 13x 600s 6nm OIII + 15 flat + 50x dark + 120x bias
Total exposure 6 hours 20 minutes.
Hardware:
- Skywatcher Black Diamond ED120
- SkyWatcher EQ8 Pro Mount
- QSI 683-ws Camera @ -15°C
- Astronomik 6nm Ha, 6nm SII, 6nm OIII filters
- Starlight Xpress Lodestar X2 Autoguider
- Innovations Foresight On Axis Guider
- Starlight Instruments Focus Boss II
Location:
- Orange zone in Brisbane, Australia. (Bortle 7)
- Imaged over 2 nights, 50% moon.
Software:
- Planning & camera alignment with Aladin 9
- Captured with AstroArt 6
- Guiding with PHD2 + PHD_Dither
- FocusLock live focusing
- CCDInspector: Image analysis & rejection
- CCDStack 2+: Calibrate, align, stack, deconvolution.
- Photoshop CC: Reduce noise, high pass filter, levels, curves, color map, saturation.