NGC 896 – Fish Head Nebula

Acquisition Date: September 7, 2018

I am not sure if Fish Head Nebula is official but people do refer to it as such. It is part of the Heart Nebula but it has a different NGC designation.

Technical Details:

William Optics 71mm f/5.9
Altair 290M camera (uncooled)
Optolong luminance filter
Unitron Model 142 GEM
Passive tracking with PEC
No active guiding

Gain 100 (FWD: 15ke-, 3.66 e-/ADU)
Offset: 20 ADU
Exposure: 50s
Camera rotation: 3.8 deg E of N

Luminance:
69.0 degF: 8 frames
69.5 degF: 54 frames
70.0 degF: 26 frames
70.5 degF: 12 frames
Darks:
69.0 degF: 269 frames
69.5 degF: 141 frames
70.0 degF: 86 frames
70.5 degF: 113 frames
Flats: 100
Bias: 100
Total integration time: 66 minutes (it really needs more time)

SharpCap 3.1.5219
PIPP 2.5.9
Deep Sky Stacker 3.3.2
StarTools 1.3.5.289

Update:

In these past couple weeks I’ve transitioned away from using Deep Sky Stacker and StarTools to using Astro Pixel Processor (APP). Here is a comparison of the two.

Deep Sky Stacker and StarTools:

Astro Pixel Processor (APP):

I like the APP image better. I am hoping that APP’s developer (Mabula) is working on noise reduction controls.

This summer I plan on re-imaging this object using Gain 200 instead of Gain 100. I have reason to believe that the bright stars will be less ‘fat’ since this bothers me. Recently I’ve experimented with Gain 200 and found that it greatly improves stars and reduces noise. The trade-off is that it lowers my full well depth from 15,000 electrons to 7,500 electrons. It will be an interesting experiment!