This is an image I took during the Eldorado star party. I really struggled with picking targets and chose this one because it looked cool and I liked the name and I've wanted to take more images of dark nebula as I'm not very good at these. The objects, LDN1355 and LDN1358 are dark nebula also named LM4 and LM5. These nebula are in the constellation of Cassiopeia. I have approximately 4 hours of integration which isn't nearly enough, but I've teased out some of the details in the dark nebula nevertheless. LDN1355 is approximately 1 light year across and 2 x 5 arc minutes in the sky. I've shot this image with a TEC140ED reduced to 700mm with an AP reducer/corrector. The camera used is an ASI2600MC OSC, and probably not the best choice, but given my limited time I wanted to end up with whole images, but given they're in Cassiopeia, I can likely get some time on them at home as well. I can probably use 3 - 4 times as much integration time to get as much signal as this image requires.
I think it looks terrific, Terri! The colors, the depth.... Wow!
Thank you Peter and Greg for the kind comments. I literally stretched the hell out of this one. The raw frames don't show anything except stars. I thought, geez, I wasted 4 hours on this and I got nothing!!! But after a lot of stretching something came out.
Terri
@terri Well, you got some great data from it, Terri. What did you use to stretch, GHS or something else?
Greg
@terri WOW - Dark nebulae are my favorite targets! This one is so UNUSUAL and you did another pro-quality job. If I can find it too, it would be fun, because as you mentioned, in RAW images they are virtually invisible - just stars! So I double-check how close I am by using Nova Astrometry, as it recognizes and labels (almost) everything in my frame. I never counted up the hours on this one, but it was 5 nights of work with my beginner-level equipment and virtually no processing skill.. (The Seahorse)
@maura-kelley That's beautiful. I need to add it to my list. A friend of mine sent me some data on this one that I've still not successfully processed. Not sure why it's been so hard but it's a bugger. You did a great job.
Terri
@maura-kelley Very nice work teasing that out of your data, Maura! Great image.
Greg
