Exploring the Suffolk Virginia Night Sky – Astronomy, Astrophotography, Telescopes, EAA – Planets and Stars and Nebula and Galaxies – Looking, Learning, Sharing… Let's see what we can see…
Another nice clear cold dry night. The waxing Crescent Moon was up a bit longer in the West, but was not very bright. The sky was really stable and clear, a nice night for collecting some light. I framed up the Horsehead Nebula just to the left of the center of the field of view and created the NINA sequence. After dark I checked focus, made sure plate solving was working correctly, and did a polar alignment. The alignment was pretty close and just need an couple of minor adjustments.
The NINA sequence kicked off at 7:15 PM and ran through the night, until just after 2 AM. The last 3 frames of the sequence had the tops of the trees in the West. The sequence ran pretty much with out issue. Around 9:40 PM something happened and the guiding RMS went to 11 arc seconds, it recovered but I had to throw out a frame. Not really sure what caused it. The total RMS over most of the session stayed between 0.80 arc seconds and 0.40 arc seconds. NINA performed the Meridian Flip just before 11 PM, all went well.
This is the stack of 121 x 180 second exposures at 121 gain, 30 offset, and bin 2×2. Stacked and calibrated with a master dark using Sirilic. Processed using my basic PixInsight workflow and a few other tweaks (Cosmic Clarity Sharpening and some minor adjustments using GHS).
Some very interesting cloud details. I especially like the dark cloudy nebula to the left of the Horsehead. The clouds of IC 434 behind the Horsehead look like a wave rolling in. There is also an interesting area of nebulosity down in the right corner. This is definitely one of my best captures (and post-processing) of this area.
There is a lot going on in this image, here is the annotated version to help identify of the key points of interest.
NGC 2023 is a small emission and reflection nebula between the Horsehead Nebula and the Flame Nebula (NGC 2024). IC 435 is small reflection nebula. The Horsehead is in the IC 434 label, but IC 434 is actually the bright nebula behind the dark Horsehead.
Flipped it so the Horsehead is not upside down.
It is amazing how sometimes just changing the orientation of an image can highlight different details.
There is some wintery weather in the forecast for the next day or two. Hoping we don’t get much snow. Cloud for the next couple days but Looks like there might be some clear skies toward the middle/end of the week.
I have about 10 days left in my free PixInsight trial… Have learned a fair bit using it for the past month or so. The results are amazing and I do plan to buy it closer to the end of the trial period.
