The Crescent Nebula

 The Crescent Nebula

The Crescent nebula has always been on my wish list since the film days. I think this is a most interesting nebula.

It formed by the fast stellar wind from the Wolf-Rayet star WR 136 (Bright star in the middle) colliding with and energizing the slower moving wind ejected by the star when it became a red giant.

Had to overcome a bunch of issues last night. Think I ended up imaging our neighbors pine tree at one point and had some autoguiding issues. I expected higher quality... anyway, here is Crescent Nebula after 1 hour and 35 minutes.

Technical Info:

Optics: SGO 6" f/4 Imaging Newtonian @ 610mm FL

Explore Scientific 2" HR Coma Corrector

Camera: ZWO ASI533MC Pro

Filter: 2" Optolong L-Enhance

Mount: Losmandy GM8

Guiding: QHY Mini Guide Scope + PHD2 Software

Acquisition: Sequence Generator Pro

Exposure: Light (Gain 200) - 19 exposures @ 300 Seconds (1 hours, 35 Minutes)

Calibration: 50 Bias, 30 Darks, 0 Flats

​Processing: Deep Sky Stacker, Adobe Photoshop, Topaz Denoise AI, Astronomy Action Set plug in for PS, Astro Flat Pro plug in for PS

Messier 5 - Globular Cluster

Messier 5 - Globular Cluster

 Interesting, globular cluster are easy to obtain but hard to image. It is easy to 'blow out the core' both in exposure and in processing. One of these I'll try and do some really good images. For now, here is M5: