Two planetaries and a Whale

Both planetary nebulae are way up north. NGC 1501 is in Camelopardalis. I actually shot the OIII for the nebula last year, but I wanted RGB for stars. I just wish I was better at keeping star colors. I’ll figure that out when I move to PI, I hope. This PN is bright and detailed, but for some reason doesn’t attract many imagers. This one only needed 5 minute OIII exposures.

NGC 1501 by The Hole in the Trees Skybox

IC 289 in Cass is tougher. It’s fainter and a bit smaller, but has some interesting details. If 1501 is off the beaten track, IC289 is in the middle of nowhere. I found only one amateur image of it, and that’s a very early one by Adam Block from Kitt Peak. This one needed 20 minute exposures, both Ha and OIII.

IC 289 by The Hole in the Trees Skybox

And last is NGC 4631, again from last spring. I keep messing with this one, and each time I look at it I see something wrong (like just now), but I have to move on! This one is straight LRGB, through pretty heavy light pollution.

NGC 4631 by The Hole in the Trees Skybox

These are all shot with a CPC1100 and SXVR-H694 (winging its way back to SX for repair as I write this) from my little backyard dog-servatory.

Kevin

2 Likes

Excellent images, Kevin.
Mark

Kevin,

Really excellent work. That is really impressive at that focal length.

Ken

Fantastic Kevin especially with CPC1100. I could not always get perfectly round stars consistently with my former CPC0800.

Peter

Thanks, Mark, Ken and Peter. Peter, I can’t say I get round stars all the time. Poor seeing still seems to throw me off. But it’s hard to complain about a scope/mount combo that gets me these results for less than $3K. Planets, too - it’s out there imaging Jupiter right now. While the moon is out and my SX is in England maybe we’ll have some good seeing for Jupiter to keep me busy. :smile: