cocoon nebula

[alacant]

Hi everyone. Never had much luck with dark areas as I thought that fewer frames was more. Anyway, despite the change from dry westerlies to humid salt laden easterlies half way through, the dark bits finally appeared without having to use too much imagination. Oh and the cheepo aliexpress cc; light passing through glass adding its own idea of colour. Hate it!  Thanks for looking and do please feel free to comment. Anything, especially wrt capturing dark patches. TIA.

700d, 3 hours

[Adam J]

Hey looks great, what are the exposure and integration details also is this the 130PDS or the F4 scope?

[ollypenrice]

I think you might be flipped here, or maybe I am?

The only answer to catching the dark stuff is more signal, perhaps in longer subs. It's showing well here, though.

Olly

[alacant]

1 hour ago, Adam J said:

is this the 130PDS

Hi. No, it's a 150 f4, alas on loan only. The pds would take all night!

1 hour ago, ollypenrice said:

you might be flipped here, or maybe I am?

No, no. It is I. Positively inverse even. I associated dark with shorter and fewer exposures.

[wookie1965]

Wow

[ollypenrice]

8 minutes ago, alacant said:

 

 I associated dark with shorter and fewer exposures.

Although the dark stuff is dark it is, none the less, reflecting a small amount of light which is why we can find structure and variety in it. (In the earliest days of AP the pioneer E.E. Barnard agonized over whether the dark patches he recorded on film were 'gaps amongst the stars' or areas of obscuring matter. He finally concluded, in accordance with modern observation, that they are patches of matter.)

So to get a decent S/N ratio out of this dusty stuff you need lots of exposure.

Olly

[alacant]

33 minutes ago, ollypenrice said:

E.E. Barnard agonized over whether the dark patches he recorded on film were 'gaps amongst the stars'

That's what I thought they were. Until your post. After wikipeding (gerund?) it also clicked that the b in b168 -as in the dark bits here- are named after the great man. It looks as if he used a long refractor and single plates to capture the dark nebulae. No dslrs in his days methinks. It really must have been all night.

[ollypenrice]

25 minutes ago, alacant said:

That's what I thought they were. Until your post. After wikipeding (gerund?) it also clicked that the b in b168 -as in the dark bits here- are named after the great man. It looks as if he used a long refractor and single plates to capture the dark nebulae. No dslrs in his days methinks. It really must have been all night.

Most of his famous deep sky images were taken using a pair of large portrait lenses, Petzvals along the lines of the Tak FSQ/TeleVue NP series, etc. A smaller format reprint of his famous Milky Way book is now available and very nice to have.

https://www.amazon.com/Photographic-Atlas-Selected-Regions-Milky/dp/0521191432

Olly

Edit. By the way, I find the dust lanes easier to see at the EP than the Cocoon itself. Odd!