HFG1

[petevasey]

I first attempted the very faint HFG1,  PN G136.3+05.5 at the November Galloway Star Party last year.  Discovered in 1982, full name Heckathorn-Fesen-Gull 1.  Such an interesting target, so I persevered with it and despite the awful weather recently I've managed to acquire more data.  I used a different off-axis guide star than for Galloway, so had to start again from scratch.  Bicolour, Ha and OIII.  SII was pretty well negligible so ignored.  Eventually I managed 23 H-alpha and 22 OIII 20 minute subs over a number of nights, some crisper than others.   QSI 683 on SharpStar 140 refractor with TS2 flattener and Starlight Xpress AO unit.  Last batch on 16th-17th January.  That set slightly compromised by extra sky glow due to snow covered ground.  I also then collected data for the background stars, an image consisting of 5 x 2 minutes each IR, Red, Green and Blue.  

So I used Steve Cannistra's method mainly to process the two colours, along with a bit more juggling, in particular using StarNet++ to remove the stars.  Then added the RGB image for stars.  And this is the best I can get.  My skies here are simply not dark and clean enough to get the best of this very faint target.  The smaller planetary nebula is magnitude 14.3 PK 136+ 4.1  But c''est las vie!

Cheers,

Peter

 

Edited January 18, 2023 by petevasey