Sharpless 63
30-Mar-2022
Although categorised as a hydrogen emission nebula, Sh2-63 lacks the bright red colouring typical of similar objects.
Instead, the extremely faint dusty nebula is incredibly difficult to capture and process, almost indistinguishable on an individual exposure. There are very few published images of this nebula, and additional information is also scarce.
Image:
- 76x 742s Luminance
- 46x 240s Red
- 45x 240s Green
- 70x 240s Blue
Total integration 19.6 hours. Focal length: 600mm
Hardware:
- Skywatcher Black Diamond 80ED
- Skywatcher EQ8-Rh mount
- QSI 683-ws8 Camera @ -15°C
- Astronomik CLSCCD light pollution filter
- Astrodon RGB Gen2 E-Series Tru-Balance filters
- Starlight Xpress Lodestar X2 Autoguider
- Innovations Foresight ONAG
- Starlight Instruments Feather Touch Focuser
Location:
- Exposed over 7 nights between 21st August to 15th September 2020
- 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, dynamic background extraction, deconvolution, noise reduction, LRGB combination, photometric color calibration, histogram, curves, local histogram equalization, crop.