Lynds Dark Nebula 1251 from the Eifel in Germany

[Avdhoeven]

Lynds Dark Nebula (LDN) 1251 by Andre van der Hoeven, on Flickr

This image shows Lynds Dark Nebula 1251 in the constellation of Cepheus. 

The image was taken from my holiday location in Steinborn-Daun in Germany. We were planning to leave home on Sunday, but the forecast for that night was so good that we decided to stay one night longer, as it was also almost new moon. I had the plan to image this dark nebula during the holidays but as there was only one clear night during the period around new moon I was only able to obtain luminance data. Therefore I decided to combine my luminance image with a RGB layer generated from the Digitized Sky Survey Red and Blue channels with an artificial green channel. This is because this nebula is impossible to image for me from my home location so it will probably take another year or so before I'll be able to catch RGB data myself (which I'm sure will generate an even more pleasing result).

In the end I was very happy to see how much detail I was able to obtain.

Telescope: TMB-92SS
Camera: QSI583ws
Exposures: 30x600s Lum (5h)

RGB data: Digitized Sky Survey R,B channels with artificial G channel

This is the luminance image:

Lynds Dark Nebula (LDN) 1251 Luminance layer by Andre van der Hoeven, on Flickr

[Knighty2112]

Excellent images. Well done!  

[Ibbo!]

that is a beauty

[baggywrinkle]

Simply superb!

[swag72]

This is a super result - While the RGB may not be your own at this stage, it is undoubtedly due to your excellent luminance data and a testament to your processing skills that this has come out so beautifully

[PatrickGilliland]

Nice work pulled out the structural counters within the dust which is nice to see - well done, Paddy

[peter shah]

love this so much...superb image

[tony210]

Very fine indeed ! Tony

[laudropb]

Very nice image.

[Avdhoeven]

Thank you all very much! Processing the color data into my image was not the easiest, but it worked out well. Now I have to wait for a long time to be at such a dark location again I'm afraid... But who knows

[Avdhoeven]

During the session I had a Nikon D810a on top of the telescope with a 70-200mm lens at 200mm. Because I had only one night I hoped to gather in this way some color data simultaneously, but I didn't have my hopes up high. In the end it showed that the result was much better then expected. I took about 44x300s at Iso 800 and was surprised about the nebulosity that was picked up. This image shows the result from the D810a (which is cropped to the central region, as the outer region was effected by some reflections).

Then I decided to combine this with my own image to create a 100% own image of this region. I was happily surprised with the result.