Crescent Nebula - NGC6888 - Cygnus

[Anonymous]

Attached image of Crescent nebula in Cygnus from last night... This was quite a tough nebula to image as it is quite large & has a fairly low surface brightness (mag 10). Initially it wouldn't fit in the FOV of my SC3 & MN56 but about 6 months ago I bought a cheap ATIK 0.5X focal reducer (never actually tried it before last night) - anyhow connected all up & was pleased to be able to focus - my MN56 effectively became a 381mm F/L at F3... The attached image is approx 200 X 15 sec sub (50 mins total)unguided exposures with IR blocking & Baader Sky & Moonglow filter. Processing was quite hard & done in Registak, Iris & PS - I had to do quite an aggressive stretch in Iris which has made the bright stars bloat a bit....I should have spent a bit more time & done some RGB but I was all done by 2.00am.....

Cheers,  John.

[JohnP]

Sorry - Last post by me... must be lacking sleep...... or possibly too many Stella's....

Cheers,  John

[Rocket Pooch]

Hi,

Thats come out really well, I'll have to do that one night.  Excellent one.

Chris

[Mike]

Good one John. The Crescent is a tricky one as it is very dim with weak colour.

[JohnP]

Thks Chris, Mike - The crescent was kinda strange because although I ended up stacking nearly 50 mins worth of exposures it didn't really look any different to a stack I did after about 15 mins. I'll try addidn some RGB soon....

Cheers,  John

[Mike]

I think I found when I did it that it need a very deep exposure to get anything more. It also has lots of Ha in it and if you are having difficulty capturing Ha then maybe that's why it didn't look any different.

[JohnP]

Yep - I need to give Ha a try....

[Greg]

John,

This was the challenge in Astronomy Now for the August issue. Why not submit it?

[JohnP]

I'll take a look - thks.. john