The Crab Nebula that was the first target I had to put a lot of effort into trying to capture and process. This nebula is a spectacular super-nova remnant — what’s left of a star collapsing in on itself and exploding, shedding unimaginable amounts of energy and charged gas. The first known record of this nebula being seen dates back to 1840 when it was spotted through a 36″ telescope — I got away with a mere 8″ for this image! I find it hard enough to imagine life in 1840, but am awestruck to think of the elation the observer must have felt when seeing this for the first time with their own eyes.
I know I say this about a lot of targets, but this is one I absolutely must re-visit. The data was not enough to produce detail and contrast and it’s been over processed to try and compensate for that. The nebula resides in the Taurus constellation which is visible in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. This image was captured in the Northern Hemisphere — in San Jose, California — but there’s hope yet for me to gather more data from Sydney.
The image was captured using my now standard rig of an AT8RC telescope, with a QSI683WSG camera and filter wheel, with a Lodestar X2 helping with the guiding of an Orion Atlas EQ-G mount. Incredible narrowband contrast was provided by Astrodon 3nm filters. The data set was as follows:
Captured using Sequence Generator Pro and OpenPHD2, and processed using PixInsight.
