NGC 6818 (Little Gem Nebula) Ha

[Atmos]

This is the Little Gem Nebula, a small planetary nebula in the constellation Sagittarius. Was a spur of the moment decision to point the telescope at it, 4:30 am, The Prawn was just about to make a collision with some trees, groggy eyed I found some random nebula higher in the sky in TSX and said go for it!

9x600s Ha (I am surprised at how bright it is). This has been heavily cropped, drizzled 2x and then expanded 300%! In the full frame it just looks like a mag 5 star.

Before adding more to this I did need better seeing and better tracking (was getting pretty bad towards the end of the night). Maybe an extra 10" of aperture would help too :P

EDIT: Added the wide field for comparison.

[Placidus]

Talk about difficult !!! WOW!

And congratulations.

[RickS]

I was going to suggest you Drizzle it but you already did :eyepop:

[Atmos]

I had no idea what I was pointing it at, wanted to try a PN and just said Go, would work it out in the morning :)



Drizzling didn't help much at all, FWHM was already over 2 so it just did a 200% sample before doing a 300% resample :)

[Joshua Bunn]

That is pushing the limits of your scope! top work.

Josh

[Atmos]

With an angular diameter of 22"x15" (http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/L/Little_Gem_Annular_Nebula.html) I would tend to agree! May have to do a full narrowband at some point to finish off this little sucker :P

[strongmanmike]

A little beauty, yes go for the full NB I recon Col :thumbsup:

These things are everywhere up there.

Mike

[Atmos]

You're not wrong about that! I turned the stars off on TheSkyX and there are hundreds of little green blips (PN). Some added focal length would probably help though :P