The large emission nebula complex in Cygnus catalogued as IC 1318, and known as the Butterfly Nebula. The main dark lane at left is LDN 889. The bright star at centre is Gamma Cygni, aka Sadr. Above it is the star cluster NGC 6910. The view is rendered in monochrome as it was shot on a moonlit night through a deep red filter in the light of H-alpha emission, prominent in such nebulas. This is a stack of 13 x 16-minute exposures with the SharpStar 94mm apo refractor at f/4.5 (with its reducer/flattener), and with the Canon Ra at ISO 1600 and equipped with an Astronomik clip-in 12nm Hydrogen-Alpha filter which lets through only very deep red light. The last few exposures were taken with a waning quarter Moon lighting the sky. Guided with the MGEN autoguider applying a dithering shift between each exposure to eliminate thermal noise when stacking the images. (Each sub-frame had a lot of thermal speckling, as when shooting in H-a with a colour camera only 1/4 of the pixels, the red ones, are recording any signal.) No darks or LENR employed. All stacking and alignment was with Photoshop. Faint nebulosity was brought out with luminosity-masked curves created with Lumenzia. ON1 NoNoise AI applied to the base stack. A mild application of Russell Croman's StarXTerminator plug-in backed off the stars within the regions of nebulosity to further enhance the nebula structures. StarXTerminator was applied selectively via the use of non-destructive layers, blend modes and masks. A mild colour grade was applied as a finishing touch to add the blue tint to the darks.
The IC 1396 nebula area of southern Cepheus, along with other faint nebulas such as Sharpless 2-129 at far right, and NGC 7380 at top left. Opaque dark nebula above centre is the B169-170-171 complex. Dark nebula below IC1396 is B160. Orange star on top edge iof IC 1396 is Mu Cephei, the Garnet Star. This is a stack of five x 5 minute exposures at f/2.8 and ISO 1600 with the Canon L-series 135mm telephoto lens, and Canon 5D MkII. Taken from Cypress Hills as the Saskatchewan Summer Star Party, August 2012.
This wide-field image frames the prominent emission nebula IC 1396, at left, and the faint arcs of Sharpless 2-129 at right, in southern Cepheus. IC 1396 contains the dark Elephant Trunk Nebula at about the 3 o’clock position in the nebula. At the top edge of the nebula is the orange giant star Mu Cephei, aka Herschel’s Garnet Star. The dark nebula at top left is Barnard 169-70-71. The dark nebulas at the bottom of IC 1396 are B160, B162 and the snake-like B365. A small blue reflection nebula below and left of the Sharpless complex is VandenBurgh 140. This is a blend of filtered and unfiltered shots, all with the William Optics RedCat 51mm astrographic refractor at its native f/5 and with the Canon EOS Ra: 6 x 8-minutes at ISO 1600 without the filter and 4 x 12-minutes at ISO 5000 with the Optolong L-Enhance filter, which reduces light by about 2 to 3 f-stops but really makes the H-alpha nebulas stand out. All stacked, aligned and blended in Photoshop. LENR employed on all frames on this warm summer night to ensure the most accurate dark frame subtraction of thermal noise but at the cost of doubling the capture time.
