A closeup of the Small Sagittarius Starcloud, aka Messier 24, at bottom, with the field extending north to include the nebulas M17, the Swan Nebula, and M16 at top, the Eagle Nebula. Between M17 and M24 is the small star cluster M18. Patches of red and blue nebulosity at bottom are IC 1283 and the blue reflection nebulas NGC 6589 and 6590. The prominent dark nebula at the right edge of the Starcloud is Barnard 92 with its lone star embedded in it, with smaller B93 above it. My framing was just a little too far west to properly include the M25 star cluster at lower left. This is a stack of 12 exposures, of 4- and 8-minutes with the William Optics RedCat 51mm astrograph at f/5 and the Canon EOS Ra at ISO 800. Aligned, stacked and mean combined in Photoshop. Taken on a perfect night from home on August 15, 2020 with this area just above my treetops. Autoguided with the ZWO ASIAir and ASI120MM guide camera with the RedCat on the Astro-Physics Mach1 mount. No filters employed here. I shot frames with and without Long Exposure Noise Reduction to test the difference on this warm summer night but saw little difference. But then again, thermal noise specks would be lost in the stars here! But LENR was not needed in this case.
Messier 26 open star cluster, at right, a bright binocular/telescopic star cluster, along with the fainter and small globular star cluster NGC 6712 at upper left, which itself is paired with the faint planetary nebula IC 1295, the greenish spot left of NGC 6712. All are in the constellation of Scutum, embedded in the rich Scutum Starcloud. The bright red star at top is S Scuti. This is a stack of 8 x 6 minute exposures at f/4.4 with the Canon 6D at ISO 800 and TMB 92mm Apo refractor with the Borg 0.85x flattener/reducer. Taken from the winter home near Silver City, New Mexico.
This is the field in Vulpecula the Fox that contains the famous planetary nebula, the Dumbbell Nebula aka Messier 27, at left, but also the faint emission nebulas NGC 6820 at right and Sharpless 2-88 above it. The small star cluster below centre is NGC 6830. A small star cluster, NGC 6823, lies embedded in NGC 6820. The field is yellowed by the interstellar dust reddening distant objects. This is a blend of filtered and unfiltered stacks: 18 x 6-minutes at ISO 2500 through the IDAS NB1 dual narrowband filter, and 16 x 3-minutes at ISO 1000 with no filter, all through the SharpStar 61 EDPHII apo refractor at f/4.6 with its reducer/flattener, and with the red-sensitive Canon Ra, all on the Star Adventurer GTi mount/tracker, autoguided with the Lacerta MGENIII autoguider, taken as part of testing the mount. No darks or LENR applied here, but the autoguider applied some dithering offset between each frame, to cancel out thermal noise hot pixels when the sub-frames were aligned and stacked. Taken Sept. 24/25, 2022 from home in Alberta on a very clear cool night. Shooting and then blending filtered with unfiltered shots provides the best of both worlds: the reddish nebulosity set in a sky preserving natural coloured stars and background tints. Nebulosity was brought out with DM1 and DM2 luminosity masks created with the Lumenzia plug-in panel for Photoshop. Finishing touches with a Paint Contrast layer added with TK Actions panel, and a mild application of the Nebula Filter from the PhotoKemi action set both boosted the nebulosity a bit more. All stacking, aligning and blending done in Adobe Photoshop.
