GH Astroimaging
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Cave Nebula, January 6 2024

It felt like such a long time since I had had any opportunity to do some imaging, and I was really only hoping to get a chance to check that I could remember how to set up all my equipment and that everything was still working as it should when an unexpected clear night looked possible.

The Cave Nebula is also known as Sh2-155, or LBN529 and its Wikipedia page has some more information about it.

The colour mapping for this image is closer to a 'natural' colour than some of my previous images. I did try to capture some OIII and SII for this object but found that the signal was so weak that I could get a better final image just by using the Hydrogen-alpha data added to the red channel along with the shorter RGB exposures that I used to capture the star colours. It was a bit disappointing to see such a lack of data from the other filters, but I was really happy to finally get back out under the stars after so many months.

You can view this image in the WorldWideTelescope by clicking here.

Equipment details:

Mount: Skywatcher HEQ5 Pro

Telescope: Skywatcher Evostar 72ED

Telescope Accessory: OVL Field Flattener

Telescope Accessory: Gerd Neumann Camera Tilt Unit

Camera: QHY294M Pro

Filter Wheel: QHY Colour Filter Wheel

Filters: Antlia EDGE Series 4.5nm SHO Filters, Antlia V-Pro Series LRGB Filters

Guide scope: Skywatcher 9x50 finder guide scope

Guide camera: ZWO ASI178MC

Capture details:

Frames: 52

Exposure per frame: 300" (x16 H-alpha), 30" (x12 red, x12 green, x12 blue)

Total Exposure Time: 1 hour 38 minutes

Camera Control Software: AstroPhotography Tool

Guiding Control Software: PHD2

Processing details:

Preprocessing Software: Starnet++

Stacking Software: AstroPixelProcessor

Image Manipulation Software: Adobe Photoshop

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