More Images

Francis has sent in a stunning image focusing on the Squid Nebula sitting inside the Flying Bat Nebula. This is a tough imaging target - one of Francis's longest imaging runs requiring 14.25 hours of scope time. With his dual imaging rig, this "only" took 7 hours of his time to capture the data. One scope captured Ha and OIII narrowband data, the other scope captured SII and OIII narrowband data.

The image is built up from 171 sub frames of 5 minutes each. These are all processed and stacked using PixInsight software. To make the Squid really stand out, Francis created a mask the same shape as the squid to allow him to hold back or enhance the processing of the squid and it's background. Francis's processing workflow has him removing the stars from the stacked image early on so that he can get the nebulosity looking good, then adding the stars back in at the end to produce the final image. Fabulous! We've shown both the final image and the starless version below:

The Flying Bat Nebula (Sh2-129) and Squid Nebula (Ou4)

The Squid is a fairly recent discovery by French amateur astronomer Nicolas Outters in 2011. The blue emission is from doubly ionised Oxygen atoms the red is from Hydrogen. Sh2-129 is about 1,300 light years away with Ou4 sitting behind some 2,300 light years away. They are located within the Cepheus region.

Keith has been out under the stars again and was lucky enough to have clear skies to view the wonderful Auroral displays in August. He's also been under Francis's tutelage to learn how to enhance a nebula image using PixInsight - dramatic improvement in clarity of the nebula. Lastly, Keith has captured the Tulip nebula SH2-101 in Cygnus:

NGC6888

Crescent Nebula is an emission nebula in the constellation Cygnus.

Keith has used PixInsight to process his original image (left) to significantly reduce the intensity of the stars and so reveal far more detail of the nebula itself (right).

SH2-101 Tulip Nebula

Sharpless 101 (Sh 2-101) is a H II region emission nebula located in the constellation Cygnus. It was catalogued by astronomer Stewart Sharpless in his 1959 catalogue of nebulae. (Wikipedia)

Francis has been busy again and looking forward to longer and darker nights. He's sent us two images taken earlier in July using a dual mount rig. Francis has two Askar 120 APO refractors with 0.8x reducers giving 672mm focal length and f5.6 focal ratio. To capture the nebulosity Francis has used a dual Ha/OIII 6nm narrow band filter. Francis took 22x 120s subs (44 mins) for the Veil nebula and 26x 120s subs (52 mins) for the North American nebula:

Veil Nebula near and including NGC6960

The Veil Nebula is a cloud of heated and ionized gas and dust in the constellation Cygnus.

It constitutes the visible portions of the Cygnus Loop, a supernova remnant, many portions of which have acquired their own individual names and catalogue identifiers like NGC6960. (Wikipedia)

North American Nebula NGC7000

The North America Nebula (NGC 7000 or Caldwell 20) is a large emission nebula in the constellation Cygnus, close to Deneb. It is named because its shape resembles North America. (Wikipedia)

In this image, you can see how the nebula gets its name - Mexico and Central America at the bottom, Gulf of Mexico to the right and a rather stubby Miami to the right!

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