NGC 7538 Ha

[Rodd]

I finished collecting data for a new Cygnus Wall image and found myself with a couple of hours of spectacular skies.  It was 3:00am on the 6th consecutive night of imaging.  An event so rare, for me I simply had to find a use for the last couple hours of this historic (and exhausting) run.  The Moon was high and at 50%, so Ha seemed in order.  So I decided see what I could get out of this target, reportedly containing the largest protostar in the known galaxy--some 100 times the size of our solar system, which I believe includes the Oort cloud.  that's pretty big--My numbers may be off, though the biggest protostar is accurate..  This targetis often overshadowed by its iconic neghbor--the Bubble Nebula, which sits just off the right hand edge of the FOV.  If I had done my homework, I would have framed this target in the lower left, so that the small nebulosity in the upper right corner would be fully in view (I think it more interesting than NGC 7365 from a structure standpoint).  Oh-well.  Not sure I will ever finsih this tagert, but if I do I would like to do so in HaRGB.  We'll see.  The processing on this image was much tougher than expected--maybe due to the dimness of the surrounding nebula.  I thought 2 hours of Ha would provide for a smooth image--far from it--it was speckly.  The Cygnus region did not exhibit this property--so maybe its the relative brightness that saved me.  

TOA 130 with ASI 1600

Ha: 23 300sec

 

[Rodd]

I don't see why this image didn't garner more attention.  I think it is a rather striking mono image.  I must say, getting the background to look like this was a huge challenge.

Rodd

Edited September 24, 2019 by Rodd

[don4l]

I think that most people are not very familiar with this object.  I've just revisited my own version, and I agree that I was not able to supress the background noise.  However, I have that problem with all of my images (a combination of over stretching and a very noisy camera).

 

[Rodd]

14 minutes ago, don4l said:

I think that most people are not very familiar with this object.  I've just revisited my own version, and I agree that I was not able to supress the background noise.  However, I have that problem with all of my images (a combination of over stretching and a very noisy camera).

 

I hear ya. My background usually stinks.  For me it’s s combination of over stretching and poor skies with high LP.  It’s also target dependent. Sometimes I get a nice background ( not often enough!).  With respect to folks not being familiar with the target, I find that s bit hard to believe. But more importantly, when that is true there is usually a high     interest because of it

Rodd

[Laurin Dave]

Nice one Rodd..  I can see a face 

Dave