Sunday night was nice and clear, and with setting the clocks back it was dark pretty early. I decided to get some more data on the Soap Bubble Nebula (PN G075.5+01.7). I collected 3 hours and 2 minutes (91 x 120 seconds) of light from the Soap Bubble on Friday night and was able to resolve the Soap Bubble Nebula after stacking and processing with Siril. I am adding some more data to the previous nights’ efforts to try and coax some more detail out of it.

I switched from the Libre Renegade SBC to a Raspberry Pi (running Raspbian with the same indi core build, but the ZWO drivers are a couple revs back) to run the INDI Server to see if I still had the issues with the camera timing out. I did not have any issues, so it could be the driver or the Libre SBC, or I just could have been lucky. I am going to update the ZWO ASI drivers on a new Raspbian build and see if the issue reappears, if it does not it points to the Libre SBC/armbian being the issue.

Right around 6 PM it was dark enough for me to get enough stars to plate solve. I did a polar alignment using the Ekos Polar Alignment Routine, I ran the Polar Alignment to the West and East. With the mount polar aligned I checked focus. Plate solving is calculating my focal length at 700.9 mm (F/6.9) and the EAF is at 6608 steps. I started the first capture run at around 6:20 PM.

Primary (Imaging)	Secondary (Guiding)
Scope: SVBONY SV503 102ED, UA Field Flattener Filter: ZWO Duo-band Filter Camera: ZWO ASI294 MC Pro, Cooled to -10 C Focuser: ZWO EAF Mount: Sky Watcher EQ6-R Pro	Scope: SVBONY SV106 60mm Guide Scope Camera: Orion Star Shooter Autoguider (OSSAG)

I continued taking 120 second exposures at 121 gain, 8 offset, and bin 2×2. I added another 3 hours (90 x 120 second exposures) Sunday night. Between Friday (11/3) and Sunday (11/5) I have 6 hours and 2 minutes of total time on the Soap Bubble.

Here is what I have so far:

Looks a lot like a Soap Bubble 🙂 Definitely a bit easier to see now with the additional data, and I did not have to stretch the histogram quite as much to get it there.

I am continuing to learn more on processing the images with Siril. My process for this image went something like this:

1. Stack, apply calibration frames, and extract Ha and OIII using the OSC_Extract_HaOIII Siril Script
2. Cropped the image to remove stacking artifacts around the edges and dust motes on the edges
3. Remove Green Noise
4. Background Extraction
5. Color Calibration
6. Save the image so I have a place to go back to.
7. Remove Stars
8. Split Channels and Convert and Stack the OIII Green and Blue Channels
9. RGB Composition – Red Channel = HA, Green Channel = Combined OIII, Blue Channel = Combined OIII
10. Color Calibration
11. Histrogram Stretch
12. Star Recomposition
13. Star Reduction using this Star Reduction Script
14. Save the final.

I plan to do a more detailed write up on my Siril workflow, but I still have a bit to learn.

Happy with the progress and results so far. Looking forward to capturing more data and continuing to work on the Soap Bubble Nebula.