LDN 1235 Dark Shark in Cepheus WIP

[john2y]

Hey guys,

three days ago I started gathering some data for the Dark shark. Due to the FOV of my setup I can't fit the whole nebula in one pic so I'll have to do a 2 panel mosaic. As it's my most favorite nebula and so far I only captured it in a widefield using Samyang 135mm with Canon 6D so it was super tiny. Now I finally tunned out my setup to do it properly. As I already mentioned I think it's just so amazing and the resemblance to a shark is really uncanny so I'm planning on spending some real time on this one. I've planned out 15-20 hours of luminance data for each panel with 5 hours for each colour filter for each panel. My current record is 22 hours of integration time and I aim to surpass it more than twice 😅. It's gonna be real pain but I really hope it'll be worth it. 

This is the result so far after three days. 103x5min (8,6 hous) of L data for the left part of the mosaic. I was surprised how visible it is after this short amount of time, I processed it in Pixi but only did DBE, Stretch, Resampled it down by 50% and fiddled with curves. In the full resolution the noise is still problem but it should slowly disappear after I add more data. 

Telescope: Explore Scientific 102/714 APO Triplet with 0.8x reducer

Mount: iOptron CEM60

Camera: ASI1600MM Pro - Gain 0, Offset 50, Cooled to -20

 

Update 28.8.2019:

Last night I finished shooting of the head part and mannaged to squeeze a few shots of the tail part as well so this is first preview of how it's gonna look like  

You can see the difference between the head with 12 hours of data and the tail with just one and a half, I need some clear moonles nights. 

 

7.9.2019 Update: 

I've managed to finish Luminance acquisition, so far 31 hours but I had to throw 7 hours out due to a lower quality. Now I'll have a couple of weeks of NB imaging as the moon starts to grow, then I'll hopefully do the RGB.

 

Cheers 

Jan

Edited September 7, 2019 by john2y

[ApophisAstros]

"You're going to need a bigger boat", 🦈

Nice one,

Roger

[john2y]

First post was updated with a preview of the mosaic  

[john2y]

New update in the first post 🙂 

[tooth_dr]

Good job. Gave this one a go myself. Certainly is challenging 

[ollypenrice]

This is going beautifully.

[john2y]

So about two months ago I did a widefield of the Cepheus using my Canon 6D and Samyang 135mm. Out of curiosity I cropped the Shark out of the image, using dynamic align I align it with my luminance data, then I really strongly denoised it and combined it to make LRGB image and even though it looks bad as an image it looks good as a preview of what I'm gonna get when I'll be done with it 🙂 

 

 

[Davey-T]

Coming along nicely, well done, been working on the same thing but have to travel to a dark site so only got the head end so far 

Dave

[Rodd]

I did not know he had a tongue--clearly visible in the first image (all of them once you know its there).  It always surprises me just how big the shark is....really need a widefield rig to capture it.  great shot.

Rodd