The Bok Globules

[MarsG76]

Hello Astronomers,

I hope everyone is keeping safe in this weird time we have found our selves.... I guess social isolation is something that us astronomy geeks are used to, goes with the territory.

I have been imaging a little bit between  the full moon and cloudy nights... I have acquired some data of three objects since January that I'm only starting to process very slowly as time permits. It is easier start to to collect photons than sit down to process the data. 

The attached is a close up of IC2944 around the Bok Globules area, AKA The Running Chicken Nebula... imaged in SHO hubble palette.

 

This is the latest image exposed...This nebula is a deep southern sky object, located about half way between the Southern Cross and The Carina Nebula.

Since I have a permanent setup in a small hut, I found myself starting the exposures during multiple night as I arrived home from work, tired and only wanted to go to sleep. If I didn't have the gear already setup there is no way I could (or would have the will to) spend so many nights on exposing subs, but as in my current situation, it is easy to just start the exposures and go to sleep... deleting the failed subs the following morning/day, and continuing during the following clear night for as long as I wanted....

The exposure time of this was about 60 hours in total, 55 subs each of 900 second HAlpha, 1200 second OIII and 1800 second SII subs, at ISO 1600 using my cooled Canon 40D astromodded DSLR. Overkill.. maybe... but can't hurt.

The tracking was on a CGEM mount, through a C8 SCT at native F10 (2032mm focal length) autoguided on PHD2 using a OAG.

 

Clear Skies,

MG

 

 

 

[tooth_dr]

Superb, what a close up!  An unusual part of the sky for us up north. 

Edited April 23, 2020 by tooth_dr

[MarsG76]

Slightly reprocessed and added the RGB data to the Narrowband signal.

 

[MarsG76]

On 23/04/2020 at 17:07, tooth_dr said:

Superb, what a close up!  An unusual part of the sky for us up north. 

Thanks, Native focal length of the 8" SCT is probably the limit of what my CGEM can guide at without too much atmospheric blur while still delivering round stars.

I like to target the southern sky objects since they seem to be mostly neglected by other astroimagers.

 

This nebula has a few interesting features which I plan to target for close ups in the future.

 

Clear skies,

Mariusz