Cygnus, Crescent Nebula

[Mike JW]

This is my first attempt at the Crescent Nebula in Cygnus. It was low time and 6 days before full moon so very bright skies. This nebula is an emission nebula and about 5000 lyrs away. Apparently it can also be called the Euro Nebula as it vaguely resembles the Euro sign!!! I was impressed at just how well I could pick up some of the detail from what is after all a low surface brightness object. I only ever detected it with a 20" Dob in very transparent, dark skies in GB. The nebula is the result of a bright Wolf-Rayet star shedding its outer layer.

C11 at f6.3, ultrastar mono. 10 x 15 sec subs.

 

 

[Martin Meredith]

Hi Mike

Its a tough one to get with the moon so bright esp. with such short exposures. It must have been very satisfying to see it building up as the subs came in.

What I really like about this area are the double stars. If you don't mind here is a shot of mine (I don't recall but almost certainly little or no moon) from some years back where I got round to labelling them. Ignore the terrible collimation/tilt...

Martin

 

[Mike JW]

Thanks Martin for posting your capture. I enjoy comparing folk's different results. Doubles is another passing interest of mine. I decided to ignore them on this occasion as I get distracted by them. So great to have them labelled up on your shot. I suspect that there is a high chance of these doubles being line of sight as there are so many stars in the fov, rather than true binaries. I must try to look them up.  With the moon in the sky for the first hour I was lunar sketching, then switched to enjoying doubles. For the final hour or so of the session I then popped the camera in and did EAA. With my narrow fov I really needed to do 2 shots to cover the area and then stitch them together.

Re an earlier post where you suggested to up the number for pixel displacement - it seems to work.

I will try to post the Hickson shots in Serpens that I did after the Crescent.

Mike