Messier 36 & NGC1931

[Hughsie]

As most here will know, November and December was very poor weather wise and January 2021 seems to be no different here in North Essex. I am trying to take advantage of short windows of opportunity and until  a run of clear nights arrives I have been concentrating on open star clusters.

January 12th provided a chance to set up for a few hours and I started to capture Messier 36 in the constellation, Auriga. Auriga is abound with open clusters and nebulosity and offers some great targets for short and long imaging sessions. With Messier 36 I was fortunate that my field of view could also capture NGC1931, a small region of nebulosity to the West of M36 and the image below is an HaRGB composite. Unfortunately I had just under 4 hours of image time and whilst I have managed to capture some of the detail in NGC1931, I feel there is more H⍺ to capture not only in the nebula but also between M36 and NGC1931.

Data

• H⍺ 12 x 300 s
• R 30 x 120 s
• G 27 x 120 s
• B 30 x 120 s 

Equipment

• William Optics Z103 refractor
• ZWO ASI1600mm Pro camera (Gain 139, Offset 30, Temp -10 ℃)
• SkyWatcher EQ6R-Pro mount
• Chroma 1.25” RGB filters and 3nm H⍺ filter
• Acquired using Sequence Generator Pro
• Processed in PixInsight

Thank you for checking in.

 

John

[Plodder]

It's very nice, well done. There is a slight blue gradient though easily removed in PI. 

[Hughsie]

25 minutes ago, Plodder said:

It's very nice, well done. There is a slight blue gradient though easily removed in PI. 

I find sometimes that PixInsight can produce ‘muddy’ backgrounds and so I will sometimes introduce some blue into the background  and reduce red to compensate, kind of give it that ‘midnight blue’ effect.

Edited January 17, 2021 by Hughsie

[MartinB]

Thats is very pleasant viewing.  Nice to see a well executed open cluster.