This is the region of central Cassiopeia containing a rich assortment of deep-sky objects: The so-called Ghosts of Cassiopeia nebulas at top, the Owl Cluster, aka the ET Cluster, at bottom, and the Pacman Nebula at right. The Ghosts of Cassiopeia are the magenta/cyan reflection and emission nebulas officially called IC 59 and IC 63. Both are reflecting the light of bluish Gamma Cassiopeiae, aka Navi. The "Ghost" name for these objects is a recent appellation. See https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap191025.html The star cluster at bottom is NGC 457, with smaller NGC 436 above it. It is variously called the Owl Cluster or the E.T. Cluster. The emission nebula at right is the Pacman Nebula, NGC 281, below the stars Eta (Achird) and Alpha (Schedar) Cassiopeiae. The blue star at far left is Delta Cassiopeiae, aka Ruchbah. It along with Gamma and Alpha form the middle three stars of the W of Cassiopeia. The field here is 7.5° x 5°, similar to binoculars. This is stack of 8 x 16-minute exposures through an IDAS NB1 nebula filter to bring out the faint nebulosity, blended with a stack of 15 x 8-minute exposures with an Astronomik UV/IR Cut filter for a white light normal colour image. All with the Canon Ra (at ISO 1600 for the NB1 filter shots and at ISO 1000 for the normal shots) through the SharpStar EDPH 61mm refractor at f/4.5. All stacking, alignment and blending with Photoshop. No LENR or darks applied, just inter-frame dithering to eliminate thermal noise specks which were prominent in the long high-ISO filtered shots. Autoguiding and dithering was with the MGEN3 stand-alone autoguider. Faint nebulosity was brought out with luminosity mask adjustments with Lumenzia.
Grus Quartet of galaxies in Grus the crane. They are from left to right, east to west, NGC 7599, NGC 7590, NGC 7582 (largest and brightest) and NGC 7552 (farthest away from main trio). This is a stack of 5 x 12 minute exposures at ISO 800 with Canon 5D MkII and Astro-Physics 105mm Traveler apo refracrtor at f/5.8. Taken from Timor Cottage, Coonabarabran, NSW. Australia, December 11, 2012.
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.
