A foray into Cepheus

[Mike JW]

Two nights ago I decided to use my STF 180 Mak Cas with the ultrastar for the first time. I normally use the STF for doubles, lunar sketching and planets. I also wanted to use the Jocular software as created by Martin. Using the STF (at f5.0) gave me the chance to do some wider fov shots and hence lends itself to nebulae. I did start with an Arp galaxy pairing but quickly decided that I prefer the smaller fov, and higher magnification of the C11 (or the 15).

Cepheus was conveniently placed so I headed to IC 1396 for a cluster/nebulosity combination. The triple star just up from the centre is BU1143, near to centre is STI2582 and bottom of view is STF 2819. I am always a sucker for doubles. Using Jocular I was easily able to try the different settings to find the best combination of tight-ish stars and to show the fuzz. It worked much better than Starlight LIve. I also found that on SLL it was struggling to stack this view but Jocular happily dealt with all the info coming in.

What I should have done is slightly move the scope and look around the area to pick up IC 1398A and B.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next I headed to NGC 7129 but miss-typed so I ended up at NGC 7139 - so much for the idea of going for extended objects. Again I found jocular with its wide range of options (hyper, log y, y, etc) very useful. Below is a zoomed in view.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I then abandoned going for wide fov objects.

Next up is the Bow tie Nebula, NGC 40 - zoomed in shot below

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now for the faint and small. Abell 75. Apparently one of the brighter PN in the Abell list. I could only just make it out despite playing with the settings so the image below was loaded into Photoshop and tweaked to show Abell 75. The live view was faint unlike this photo shopped view. I think I have the central star.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To finish the selection here is Gyulbudaghian's Nebula (HH215). It is a variable nebula and if I understand correctly is the result of jets of gas coming from PV cephei, the star at the top end of the fan shaped grey fuzz. I had to photoshop the image to enhance the view. The live view was faint.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I certainly enjoyed the outing with the STF and gained more confidence with Jocular. I can see myself gradually going over to Jocular. It seems more versatile than SLL. Also as we know SLL is no longer being developed, whereas Jocular is being upgraded. Out of interest I did not come to any conclusion as to which type of stretch works well for nebulae.

PS. I also took a peak at M13 with the STF - lovely sight but did not save it.

Mike

[Martin Meredith]

Nice captures Mike! I never seem to have much success with PNs.

Glad you're having fun with the stretch functions. We need more reports of which work well with different types of objects. I find log is great for globular clusters for instance. Bright PNs seem to work best with linear. 

Martin

[Mike JW]

When I do more Jocular outings I will experiment with the stretch functions and feed back my conclusions. Mike