A portrait in monochrome of the rich nebulous region around the North America and Pelican Nebulas in northern Cygnus, with the star Deneb at right of centre. This is shot through a deep-red narrow-band filter that lets through only Hydrogen-alpha light, the emission line that nebulas like these primarily radiate at. This was taken in a bright moonlit, though rural sky (with a waxing gibbous Moon in the opposite side of the sky) as a test of a new autoguider system and through the William Optics RedCat 51mm f/4.9 astrographic refractor, also under test. The camera was the Canon EOS Ra, sensitive to H-a light. The filter was the 12nm Astronomik clip-in filter. The field is about 8° x 5°. This is a stack of just 6 x 12-minute exposures at ISO 2500. Due to the low signal through the dense filter and the fact that only 1/4 of the Bayer-array pixels are receiving signal, such images really need lots more exposure time and sub-frames to do the best job and keep noise down. Local contrast adjustments made with luminosity masks created by Lumenzia extension panel.
Hadar, Beta Centauri, the second brightest star Centaurus, and one of the southern Pointer stars. The sparse cluster at top is NGC 5381. This is a stack of 4 x 4-minute exposures with the Canon 6D at ISO 1600 plus a short 1-minute exposure, both through the 106mm Astro-Physics Traveler telescope, from Tibuc Cottage April 12, 2016. Taken with the waxing crescent Moon up.
The Heart Nebula (at right, aka IC 1805) and the Soul Nebula (at left, aka IC 1848, ad also the Foetus Nebula), in Cassiopeia. Just right of upper centre is the open star cluster NGC 1027. The star cluster in the middle of the Heart Nebula is called Melotte 15. The patch of nebulosity at upper right detached from the rest is NGC 896. The field is filled with numerous other clusters and dark nebulas from lesser known catalogs. The field lies right on the Galactic Equator, with most objects here located in the Perseus spiral arm, the next one out from ours, some 6000 to 7500 light years away. This is a 3-segment mosaic, taken Nov 15 and 16, 2014 from New Mexico. Each segment is a stack of 12 x 6 minute exposures with the filter-modified Canon 5D MkII camera at ISO 800, through the TMB 92mm apo refractor at f/4.4 using the Borg 0.85x field flattener/reducer. Stitched in Photoshop.
