Paramount
06-08-2014, 06:05 AM
Hi
This has been my toughest target to date mainly because of the extremely faint OU4 (Giant Squid Nebula) that lies within Sh2-129 (Flying Bat Nebula). They are strange objects in that there is Ha and SII in Sh2-129 but no OIII that I could detect and OU4 only has OIII but no Ha and SII. OU4 was discovered in 2011 by French astroimager Nicolas Outters hence the designation OU4 and it is thought to be a bi-polar planetary nebula.
Exposure times are as follows
Ha = 28x10 minutes
OIII = 45x10 minutes
SII = 23x10 minutes
As with all my current images this was taken with the Televue NP127/FLI astrograph that I'm testing on my Paramount ME with auto guiding done by a Starlight Xpress Lodestar on an Officine Stellare Falco guide scope using dithering between exposures.
The image is still a bit noisy which may be resolved by shooting more data but I'm reasonably happy with the result as my main aim was to get the squid to show. The blue channel (OIII) required more stretching than the Ha and SII hence the bluish background and didn't show any detail at all on the downloads or the stacked master frame, it didn't start to show until after the second iteration of curves before colour combining
The full size image can be seen at the following link
http://m7.i.pbase.com/o9/29/869929/1/156838737.SkzNJ9VY.Sh2129_OU4HST.jp g
Thanks for looking
Best wishes
Gordon
This has been my toughest target to date mainly because of the extremely faint OU4 (Giant Squid Nebula) that lies within Sh2-129 (Flying Bat Nebula). They are strange objects in that there is Ha and SII in Sh2-129 but no OIII that I could detect and OU4 only has OIII but no Ha and SII. OU4 was discovered in 2011 by French astroimager Nicolas Outters hence the designation OU4 and it is thought to be a bi-polar planetary nebula.
Exposure times are as follows
Ha = 28x10 minutes
OIII = 45x10 minutes
SII = 23x10 minutes
As with all my current images this was taken with the Televue NP127/FLI astrograph that I'm testing on my Paramount ME with auto guiding done by a Starlight Xpress Lodestar on an Officine Stellare Falco guide scope using dithering between exposures.
The image is still a bit noisy which may be resolved by shooting more data but I'm reasonably happy with the result as my main aim was to get the squid to show. The blue channel (OIII) required more stretching than the Ha and SII hence the bluish background and didn't show any detail at all on the downloads or the stacked master frame, it didn't start to show until after the second iteration of curves before colour combining
The full size image can be seen at the following link
http://m7.i.pbase.com/o9/29/869929/1/156838737.SkzNJ9VY.Sh2129_OU4HST.jp g
Thanks for looking
Best wishes
Gordon