What is this?

[StargeezerTim]

Hi there,

Last week I tried to capture the Iris nebula. After 2 star alignment, I slewed and took 5 90 second pics. I could see nothing on the pics and saw nothing in the eyepiece so thought I must have 'missed' the area. Today I was trying to get to grips with DSS and GIMP so produced a Tif again and used levels, colour balance and lightness/contrast and this came to be!

It looks too uniform to me be actual nebulosity but I was wondering if anyone knew what this was. I assume its just an unintended consequence of processing, but if I have discovered a new nebula with my six incher, what a feat!

Look forward to being enlightened by you...Tim. 

[aleborek]

it came to me on my orion shots too... i think it can be a collimation problem, but i didnt had the chance to shot again (2 weeks of cloudy nights)

[Cath]

Colour biased vignetting of an out of view light source, or some such light intrusion, or a sensor bias ? .. don't know

Apart from that, the possibility exists that you have caught one or two or three or more stars in your imagine that contain planets with lifeforms that could make our stage of existence look so silly.

[D4N]

Light leak or reflection?

Try taking an image half an image width to one side and see if the red patch moves or not.

That appears to be a patch of sky in Chepheus but there isn't anything recorded as being there.

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[Stub Mandrel]

The Borg?

[StargeezerTim]

Okay then... I take it you don't think much of my discovery... Back to the day job!

[Cath]

don't think that Tim. Someone will eventually be along who knows exactly what is causing it.

[StargeezerTim]

Colour biased vignetting of an out of view light source, or some such light intrusion, or a sensor bias ? .. don't know

Apart from that, the possibility exists that you have caught one or two or three or more stars in your imagine that contain planets with lifeforms that could make our stage of existence look so silly.

Wonder if they have reliable broadband and decent takeaways...

[Cath]

Try doing the same exposures, same camera settings etc but with the telescope end cap on covering the front. See if you still get the same red central patch.