The Blushing Mule in Cygnus
The Blushing Mule (IC1318) in Widefield,
Sadr Nebulosity and the Crescent Nebula, Cygnus, Sep 2022
Williams Optics Redcat APO 51; - ASI2600MC;
Celestron CGEM II; IDAS NBZ Nebular Booster Filter;
72 x 600s exposures, Bin 1, Gain 100;
Total Integration Time = 12 hours;
It's strange what your brain comes up with while processing an image. The nebulosity around Sadr doesn't have a common name, so I had to see what it made me think of in order to name this image...
To me it looks like a heavily burdened mule travelling to the left, with the blushing, bridled face of the mule on the left hand side. Below the tail on the RHS is a Crescenty road offering, likely causing the mule to blush in the first place. Now I have to come up with some legend/myth about the mule - something about "Zeus putting the mule there to deliver online shopping during the summer"
Thanks to GHS and a reasonable amount of integration time, I was able to pull out quite a bit of OIII nebulosity, but with dual narrowband filters, you just don't get near the crispness of the Ha/Red signal (at least I don't). I still really like the dual narrowband filters /OSC combo as you can capture a lot of data very fast and it yield reasonable RGB colours.
I am finally settling on a technique to add stars back into a starless image while preserving star colour, making the star smaller, and avoiding major artifacts.
Still waiting for a replacement CP4 controller for my A-P mount, but I have to wait until Fedex admits losing it while being sent back. I am having fun with wider fields though.