Exploring the Suffolk Virginia Night Sky – Astronomy, Astrophotography, Telescopes, EAA – Planets and Stars and Nebula and Galaxies – Looking, Learning, Sharing… Let's see what we can see…
A couple nights ago I was tinkering around with the telescope and broadcasting on the Night Skies Network. Dave from West Virginia joined the broadcast and mentioned a dark nebula, LBN 762, and this target was the SkywatcherUSA Target of the Month (TOTM). We had a look at it, I was doing EAA captures of 90 seconds. After a few frames we could start to make out the dark nebula, so I added this to my list of things to look for. Figured I would try to get it in December to submit it to SkywatcherUSA Target of the Month (TOTM).
It was cold but clear. I uncovered the scope early in the afternoon and shot some new 180 second darks. Once the Sun set I ran the Ekos Auto Focus Routine and then Polar Alignment Routine. Auto Focus determined the optimal focus to be at 10097 steps. After focusing plate solving calculated the focal length at 569.1 mm which is F/5.6 as expected with the .8 focal reducer. I started capturing LBN 762 at around 6:30 PM.
I captured 4 hours of 180 second exposures (80 x 180 seconds) at 121 gain, 30 offset, and bin 2×2. Ekos did a meridian flip about 3 hours in, and that worked as expected. I periodically checked the stack in SharpCap and it was looking pretty good. I packed things up at around 11 PM. I needed flats, I shot those this morning and applied them to the Siril stack.
LBN 762 (aka MBM 13), the Drunken Dragon Nebula, a reflection nebula and dust cloud about 850 light years from Earth in the constellation Aries. This is 80 x 180 seconds (4 hours) at 121 gain, 30 offset, and bin 2×2. Stacked, cropped, and processed with flats and darks applied in Siril.
I think that looks pretty good. There are a few faint distant galaxies which can also resolved. I plan to submit it to the SkywatcherUSA TOTM.
The sky is suppose to be clear tonight so I hope to add a few more hours of LBN 762 data to the stack.
A little bit more tinkering with the Drunken Dragon Nebula in Siril…
Cleaned up some of the noise and increased the contrast a bit. Looking forward to adding some more data to it.
