The California Nebula (NGC 1499) now holds the record for the largest deep space object I've photographed. This sprawling emission nebula is lit up by the by star in the lower center of the picture. The nebula is so large that only about half of it is captured in this photo, the rest extends up and to the right and down and to the left. Though appearing quite bright in this photo, at the eyepiece and in raw images there really isn't much to see. It definitely requires a series of long exposures and some careful post processing to tease out the faint nebula structure.
Photo Details
February 11, 2015
Orion 8" Astrograph on VX Mount
Nikon D3100 Camera - ISO 1600
Baader MPC Mark III Multi-Purpose Coma Corrector
Skyglow filter
Autoguider
45 sub-frames at 3.0 minutes/frame
Total Exposure Time = 2 hours 15 minutes
Image Stacking in Deep Sky Tracker
Image Processing in PhotoShop
This picture is so lovely. I love the colors you were able to capture.
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