Snake Nebula B72

[furgle]

The Snake Nebula (also known as Barnard 72) is a small but S-shaped dust lane that snakes out in front of the Milky Way star clouds.



This is a test shot with minimal processing from a night of observatory automation software testing.


Better resolution here (http://observatory.site/astrophotography/Snake_Nebula/Snake_Nebula_20180523.html)



Image Integration:



33x 90s red
31x 90s green
34x 90s blue

Total exposure 2 hours 27 minutes.


Hardware:



Skywatcher Black Diamond 120ED
SkyWatcher EQ8 Pro Mount
QSI 683-ws8 Camera @ -15°C
Astronomik Deep Sky RGB filters
Starlight Xpress Lodestar X2 Autoguider
Innovations Foresight On Axis Guider

Location:



Orange zone in Brisbane, Australia. (Bortle 7)

Software:



Planning & camera alignment with The SkyX Pro
Captured with AstroArt 6
Guiding with PHD2 + PHD_Dither
CCDStack 2+: Calibrate, align, stack.
PixInsight: Background neutralization, linear fit, histogram stretch, saturation.

[multiweb]

It looks very good Adam. A great part of the sky. :thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup: If you have a browse around off field there are a lot of other interesting dark nebulae. I did a wide field (https://public.dm.files.1drv.com/y4mmJnAbh-eURM-YFn9EXbkQuZGl9lmZKnkiaoVklSRb58mO13 DMKTyTcUseFZ9SZWa5xF3slz34qUddpdf_X n7eQaMPnASakf-E1MvwFUnzUoh_aV7gEpsQDmRfWI6KCIua04 LKLULLVKpsNzQ6F4N8K_spImtixKs2pLDHk n3rIWVqqH6Sk6dqTdKiC2k_80L0uX9whN-mneZMLGpKvmkL2S3uDJxIAG0h7eidbMvntQ/scorpius_rgb_vr_ff.jpg?psid=1) (middle right) on this area a while ago. Gotta love milkyway season. So much stuff to play with at any FL.

[Geoff45]

Nice field, good star colours. Could be improved by a bit more contrast between the nebula and the star field.

[Placidus]

An old favourite of mine, not photographed in the last ten years, so getting all nostalgic.

I agree with Geoff that the stars are excellent but the nebula could be a tiny bit more contrasty.

Very well done.

Mike