I imaged the Wizard Nebula (NGC 7380) for 15 hours

https://i.redd.it/1d5cva4l02pd1.jpeg

2 Comments

  1. Hi fellow space enthusiasts! This is my first time posting to r/space but I have been a visitor here for a while. I collected about 2 hours of images per night of this nebula over the past 2 weeks, along with several other targets. I usually pick a few targets so that I am always imaging in the eastern half of the sky, as I have a big city to the west, but that means I have to run that same sequence for multiple nights to have enough images of each target.

    For this, I used a Celestron 8″ EdgeHD telescope. It is mounted on a Skywatcher EQ6-r mount, and is fitted with the following image train: f/7 reducer, ZWO OAG-L, ZWO EFW7, ZWO 2600mm, and a ZWO 174mm in the OAG for guiding. It is controlled by a miniPC running: PHD2 and N.I.N.A. I collected 3 hours of 2-minute exposures in Hydrogen-α, and 6 hours each of 2-minute exposures in Sulphur-II & Oxygen-III. The filters have a bandpass of 7nm each, and are made by ZWO.

    I stacked the images together and did most of the processing using a free program called Siril, with a little help from some other free software: Starnet++ and GraXpert3. The finishing touches were done in another free software called G.I.M.P., which is sort of like Photoshop, but free. I hope you all enjoy the photo!