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On two cool crisp clear nights in October 2020 I pointed the Esprit 100 triplet refractor at the Soul Nebula in Cassiopeia. I don’t have a rotator on my telescope setup and didn’t want to change the orientation of the camera so the entire Soul Nebula didn’t fit in the FOV. If I rotated 90deg it would have. None-the-less there was still a lot of this nebula to image and with the high resolution of the QHY268C camera (26mp!) I am able to crop and focus on specific areas of the Soul.
I decided to focus in on the IC 1871 region when processing the data.
This is actually a small region of the much larger nebula complex. It’s known as IC1871. We can see dark dust clouds with bright ridges of glowing gas. The nebula is an estimated distance of 6,500 light-years from Earth. It is a star-forming complex. This image represents 12.5 hours of data collected using the Esprit 100 triplet refractor, QHY268C cmos camera and Optolong L-eXtreme filter. Acquisition with NINA and processed in PixInsight.
Technical:
- Skywatcher Esprit 100mm APO refractor, F5.5 http://bit.ly/36w1F7Y
- QHY268C @ -10deg 26mp https://bit.ly/37OeYS5
- Optolong filter L-eXtreme http://bit.ly/32a9Gfu
- Skywatcher EQ6 mount
- Pegasus Astro Pocket Powerbox Advance https://bit.ly/3aTBUiO
- 5min subs, 56-gain/30-offset
- NINA, PHD2, EQmod softwares for acquisition
- Pixinsight 1.8 calibration, processing
- Seeing and transparency average
My story began more than 40 years ago looking up at the Moon with a small collapsible telescope my Father had. Encouraged by my parents, who bought me my very own telescope, a 4.5″ reflector, I began to explore the night sky from my family home backyard. Today I do astrophotography from my home in Kitchener, Ontario and also with remote telescopes located in New Mexico and Australia. Some of my images have won awards and have been featured online and in magazines.
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