Prawn Nebula

[JimFox]

I was finally able to get clear skies and clear time for the first time in 3 months. It's insane to think that it's been that long since I used my regular Astro gear. So I ran out to Joshua Tree NP and set up my gear at the Black Rock Campground, it's probably Bortle 3 there, so pretty dark.

My goal was to capture some obects that are very low on the Southern Horizon. So I would never see these up in Colorado or Wyoming. So since I was back in California I wanted to capture a couple. If I get a chance I will try to get more time on these, but for now it was minimal time of 2 hours or so I could grab before the objects slipped below the horizon.

This is just a slight crop on my 500mm scope. I wanted to work on keeping the dark nebula and not letting it disappear into a too dark of background. Hopefully that works. I have a tighter crop I will post later.

35 Lights @ 180 secs with Optolong L-Quad filter
30 Flats
30 Dark Flats
30 Darks

ASI2600mc Pro - Astro Camera
Askar Fra500 - Scope
ZWO AM5 - Mount
ZWO EAF
ASIAir Plus - Astro Controller
Processed in Pixinsight
BlurXterminator
NoiseXterminator
StarXterminator
GradiationCorrection
Finished in Photoshop

All comments are welcome,

Jim

 

[AlanLichty]

Nice you were finally able to get out for dark skies and clear views. The result looks nice for the time you were able to get on your target.

 

[JimFox]

Nice you were finally able to get out for dark skies and clear views. The result looks nice for the time you were able to get on your target.

Thanks Alan! I was pleasantly surprised by the nice detail in this. I might be able to get out next week as it's cloudy down here until then. But I am heading up to Yosemite in the morning to do some Milky Way images for a few nights, and then I am thinking on heading to Redwoods along the Northern California coast. Not 100% sure yet on that.

 

[Mike Lewis]

Nice one JIm - I have never tried for this one before. I will have to see how low it is from SFRO...

ML

 

[JimFox]

Nice one JIm - I have never tried for this one before. I will have to see how low it is from SFRO...

ML

Thanks Mike! You should give it a try.