Total integration: 43.75 hours/2625 minutes (136x7m = ~16h for
Camera: QHY163M (16mp mono)
Telescope: Stellarvue SV70T triplet apochromat refractor @
Reducer: SFFR70-
Mount: Paramount MyT.
Filters: Astrodon 5nm
Software: TheSkyX Pro, SharpCap, PixInsight.
Inline images with reduced quality uploaded to the forum. Full resolution versions of all versions are available via https://www.astrobin.com/97h2mp/ and of the primary image at fhttp://ram.org/images/space/scope/1.4.4.5/ic1805_136x420+92x420+147x420_2625m_43.8h.jpg
The Heart nebula region is about 7500 light years away from Earth in the constellation Cassiopeia. The 330 light year diametre complex contains the eponymous emission nebula (Ced7/Cr26/IC1805/LBN654/Mel15/Sh2-190) shaped correspondingly, along with a separate region labelled the Fishhead nebula (Ced6/IC1795/LBN645/NGC896), which was the first part to be discovered. The nebula's shape and distinct signal is due to a cluster of stars in the middle in an area that could appropriately be called the tendrils of creation.
One of the more striking aspects of this nebulosity is the number of dark nebulae (~15) contained within it (LDN1356 and LDN1359 through LDN1373) many of which I've tried to highlight especially on the
This capture is part of my "make up for being a newbie" series, where usually once a year I revisit one of my very first images and redo it with the latest capturing and processing techniques that I've learnt. In this regard, the Heart nebula complex represented a lot of firsts for me: it was one of my very first astrophotography images, my first narrowband image, the first colour image with the SV70T scope, and it was done on my first mount. This version which I did back in 2017 had a total of integration of 4.7 hours, so this current version has almost ten times as much information going into it. I hope you'll agree with me that this current version is a far cry from the image I did using live stacking, 8 bit PNGs, and my AVX where I could only get two minutes unguided per frame, yielding a total integration of less than five hours (https://www.astrobin.com/305156/).
There's ~44 hours of captured data going in this version and I think even though the gains are incremental, I was able to bring out additional background nebulosity and details, as well as reduce noise, particularly in the
I've put up two bicolour and tricolour Hubble palette versions of this capture on AstroBin along with the
As always, I'm curious about which version people like (or don't like); thanks for looking!
--Ram