The Omega Nebula

[MarsG76]

Hello Astronomers,

Adding my latest image to the comp. This is the Swan (or Omega) nebula imaged during multiple nights between 28 July - 8 August 2019 with my Canon 40D DSLR through my 8" SCT at F10, 2032mm focal length. Imaged in narrowband through Baader SII, HAlpha and OIII filters and combined as SHO (Hubble Palette) colour.

Total exposure time was 27 hours.

HAlpha Subs are 10 & 15 minutes long, OIII subs are 15 & 20 minutes and SII subs are all 30 minutes so I had to spend at least 2 whole nights per filter, except in the case of SII which was 3 nights. The amount of time it took to gather the subs wasn't crucial since I have a permanent setup and resuming exposures night to night took about 10 minutes, and I wanted as many subs as possible to keep the noise level to a minimum, and to be honest I could just keep on adding subs for as many nights as M17 was in the sky on moonless nights but I find that more than 40 subs per channel on brighter objects seems to have diminishing returns.

Gathering more and more subs is made it easy when we're in a drought and there are hardly any clouds in the sky, mostly dry and cloud-free nights lately, which allowed me to have 100% successfully exposed subs.

All subs are ISO1600 and the active cooling definitely helps with the noise levels, most noticeable with SII when comparing to my SII 1800 second subs captured in the past.

Clear skies,

MG

Edited August 15, 2019 by MarsG76