Thursday, January 10, 2019

California Nebula - NGC 1499


I first visited this celestial "geographic" wonder back in 2015 and was thrilled to come back a few nights ago when the skies finally cleared and we had a deliciously cold night.  This nebula is absolutely massive.  If we could see it with the naked eye, it would span about 5 moon-widths from tip to tail and about 2 moon-widths across.  However, since it is an emission nebula (think gas cloud lit by a nearby star) the light is very diffused and difficult to observe even through a telescope.  This one takes a lot of patience and faith that you're on target.  Total exposure time for this image was 2 hours.  

Photo Details
January 6, 2019
AstroTech 65Q on VX Mount
SBIG STF-8300C Camera
Skyglow filter
40 subframes at 3 minutes/frame
Total Exposure Time = 2 Hours
Image Acquisition in CCDOps
Image Stacking in Deep Sky Tracker
Image Processing in PhotoShop

No comments:

Post a Comment