This project is a reprocess of data from the Crescent Nebula. I posted this on my Flickr account before but just for this page I reprocessed it so I could hopefully make it better. I am also adding individual channels of data for other astrophotographers to see what data is available in this area of space. I did make SHO or Hubble Palate color images both with stars and starless, and HOO color images with and without stars. SHO is where Sulfur is mapped to red, Hydrogen is mapped to green, and Oxygen is mapped to blue. HOO is where Hydrogen is mapped to red, and Oxygen is mapped both to green and blue. This nebula is caused by a Wolf-Rayet star called WR-136. They are very energetic stars and this one is going to explode someday. The nebula is caused by the star’s winds blowing out from the surface. It doesn’t look much like a crescent shape in images but when it was discovered in 1792, it looked like one then. With photographs it shows much more dim data so it looks more like a brain now. This is kind of on the edge of a huge nebula so there’s some of that showing in the background. In the upper right of these images is another small nebula I didn’t even know I captured until I reprocessed this data for this page. It’s called the Soap Bubble Nebula. It’s a planetary nebula like the Helix Nebula, but in this picture it much smaller. It has a dying star in the center but it’s very dim and can’t be seen here. That nebula shows up best in the starless images. It was only discovered in 2007 by an amateur astrophotographer, like me. His name is Dave Jurasevich. Kind of weird that nobody else knew about it before.
Here is the SHO image with stars left in the image.
Here is the starless SHO image to highlight the nebulae in the area.
Here is the HOO version of the Crescent Nebula with stars intact.
The starless version of HOO colors. In the upper right you can also see the Soap Bubble Nebula. I think it shows better in this HOO image below than the starless SHO image.
Below are the various individual channels of Ha, SII, and OIII.
First is the Ha (Hydrogen) channel
Second is the SII (Sulfur) channel.
Finally is the OIII channel.
Below are some capture details of what all these images were captured with, like the telescope, camera, and length of exposures. I feel if I had been in a better area and got more exposures these could have been better. I was in Norman, Oklahoma and this was basically at an interstate exchange. Probably the worst possible place to do anything with space and especially long exposure photography. The filters helped immensely but they can’t block the light pollution completely.
Camera: ZWO 183MM Pro
Mount: EQ6R Pro
Telescope: Skywatcher Evostar 72mm
Field flattener: Orion field flattener for short refractors
Guided with Astromania 60mm guide scope
Guide camera: ZWO Asi 120mm-s
Gain: 111
Sensor Temperature: -10C
Ha Frames: 40 @300s
SII Frames: 38 @300s
OIII Frames: 59 @ 180s
Integration time : about 9 hours
Flats: 50/filter
Dark Flats: 50/filter
Darks: 50/filter
Captured by NINA
Polar aligned by SharpCap
Stacked and processed by Pixinsight