A very big, but very faint nebula in the sky

Software Siril
1

Hello everyone.
This nebula is a planetary nebula, showing the remains of the explosion of a star long ago.
This nebula is huge and has a diameter 4 times bigger than the Moon. However it is very faint and it is difficult to get its signal. I had to use special filters and shoot for a long time:

  • 5h in Ha
  • 9h in OIII
  • 1h in R
  • 1h in G
  • 1h in B

The RGB exposures are only made for the star colors.

HOO_RGB
HOO_RGB6213Ă—4153 4.89 MB

The same with annotations:

image
image1122Ă—750 416 KB

To show you how weak the signal is, here a single frame of 10minin Ha:

image
image1122Ă—750 219 KB

And 10min in OIII:

image
image1122Ă—750 238 KB

My setup:

  • FS60CB + 0.72x reducer
  • ZWO ASI 2600MM
  • Filters Ha, OIII Antlia 4.5nm, R, G and B Antlia too

Cheers,

7 Likes
2

Short but interesting read, what exposure/iso ? did you stack multiple shots taken with the same filter or just one long shot per wavelength ? do you use a tracking mount setup ? and last but not least, what software did you use :smiley:

The result is really nice and if I could that’s a kind of hobby I’d like to take on…

PS : do you know what’s LdN-1445

3

I use a special astro camera. No iso setup, but just a gain, set to 100.

These are multiple frames, each with 10 minutes of exposure, for Ha and OIII and 2min for R, G and B:

  • 54 images for OIII
  • 30 images for Ha

This is done on several nights. Of course I have a tracking mount because without it, it would be impossible to get 10min per frame.

I use Siril, the soft we develop here.

Yes, this is a dark nebula you can see on the image. LdN stands for Lynds Catalog of Dark Nebulae.

Cheers,

2 Likes
4

Hehe, I guess you have to take it to that level of “serious” for it to look that nice :smiley:
Thanks for all the answers !

1 Like
5

This is so awesome! I like the red colors in this, very ethereal

2 Likes
6

Imagine that red is hydrogen, and that you are composed of hydrogen from this type of nebula :).

2 Likes