I cannot believe that it has been over three years since I have posted my work. [Insert lame excuse here]. While I have not been sharing, I have been imaging the night sky regularly and have plenty of content to share. Over the last three years I have upgraded my equipment and improved my processing skills and throughout this evolution I have been able to really zero in on what interests me in the night sky. Additionally I built a small observatory in my backyard just over a year ago. This allows me to keep my equipment always setup and ready to go and when I have a clear night, all I have to do is slide the roof off! This means I can be imaging within five minutes of removing the roof compared to about forty-five minutes of prep work when I had to setup every time I wished to image. When you are really tired after a long day of work it’s much easier to motivate when all you need to do is open the roof!
I will detail the observatory build in a separate post but to give you an idea of what my setup looks like, here is a photo of the structure with the roof off.
The image I will focus on in this post is of a dark nebula designated LBN 468. It is located in the Northern Sky within the constellation of Cepheus at a distance of about 1,600 light years away. For context within the sky, this image is just over three degrees in width, which is about six times the diameter of the Full moon. Within this image you could fit about thirty full moons, so from a deep space imaging perspective, this is a pretty wide field.
At the top left of the large dusty structure is a small nebula called Gyulbudaghian’s Nebula. This nebula changes appearance over the course of months and years as it is illuminated by the variable star PV Cep.This image was created over several months during June of 2020 and consists of about fourteen hours of exposure time. For a full resolution version of LBN 468 you can click here to be redirected to my Astrobin site.
Capture details: QSI683 WSG-8 Camera | Astrotech AT92 Telescope | Starizona APEX 0.65x Reducer | iOptron CEM60 Mount | Red Channel 30x300s | Green Channel 28x300s | Blue Channel 28x300s | Luminance 200x120s | Total Integration Time 13.8 Hours