Butterfly Cluster with plenty of Ha

[furgle]

I don't usually photograph open clusters, but with that rich Ha field, I couldn't resist!


Much higher quality version here

(https://observatory.site/astrophotography/The_Butterfly_Cluster/)
Image:



38x 180s Red
35x 180s Green
33x 180s Blue
31x 300s 6nm Hα

Total integration 7 hours, 53 minutes.


Hardware:



Skywatcher Black Diamond 80ED
Skywatcher EQ8 Pro mount
QSI 683-ws8 Camera @ -15°C
Astronomik 6nm Hα, deep sky RGB filters
Starlight Xpress Lodestar X2 Autoguider
Innovations Foresight On Axis Guider
Starlight Instruments Focus Boss II

Location:



Imaged on 2 nights: 31st May and 4th June 2019.
Orange zone in Brisbane, Australia. (Bortle 7)

Software:



Planning & camera alignment with Aladin 10
Captured with TheSkyX Professional
Guiding with PHD2
FocusLock live focusing
PixInsight: Calibrate, align, stack, deconvolution, NBCombinator, histogram stretch, curves.

[alan meehan]

that's a really nice field of view

[Atmos]

Very nice Adam! That ED80 is giving out some great results :thumbsup:

[Ross G]

A very good photo Adam, especially coming from a city location.


Great colour and I like the composition.


Ross.

[Placidus]

The H-alpha and the one red giant provide a lovely contrast to the exploding firework of the OB stars. Nicely done.

Just for visual appeal, we'd be tempted to make the blacks a bit blacker. Understand why you didn't though.

[Bart]

That is a lovely shot. Such a simple target beautifully presented with the background delights of the Milky Way. :thumbsup:

[Andy01]

Looks great Adam, lovely piece of sky there :)

[Paul Haese]

Nice work Adam. Lovely colours and composition.

[gregbradley]

That's really cool. Its hard to capture the beauty of these open star clusters and you have done a good job of that.

Greg.

[topheart]

Beautifully done!
Cheers,
Tim