Soul Nebula in Ha

Acquisition Date: September 30, 2018

The inspiration for this image came from Sara Wager — an incredible, creamy smooth color image using three narrowband filters and over 37 hours total integration time. My equipment doesn’t come close to hers but I wanted to give it a try.

Due to a spate of bad weather I could only manage one clear night to image in Hydrogen-Alpha (Ha). That explains why my image is black & white and Sara’s is color.

Another obvious difference is that my image is ‘noisier’. The primary reason is that Sara’s camera is cooled and mine is not. Images from cooled cameras suffer less from thermal noise. Finally, she’s got 37 hours of integration time and I’ve got 2 hours. Noise tends to cancel with increased time due to its random nature

Technical Details:

William Optics 71mm f/5.9
Altair 290M camera (uncooled)
Orion 6nm Hydrogen Alpha filter
Unitron Model 142 GEM
Passive tracking with PEC
No active guiding

Gain 389 (1.0 e-/ADU, FWD: 4ke-, Read Noise: 1.38e-)
Offset: 30 ADU
Exposure: 200s
Camera rotation: 355 deg E of N

Ha:
48.0 degF: 8 frames
48.5 degF: 21 frames
49.0 degF: 11 frames
49.5 degF: 1 frames
Darks:
48.0 degF: 20 frames
48.5 degF: 21 frames
49.0 degF: 32 frames
49.5 degF: 29 frames
Flats: 50
Bias: 100
Temperature-matching disabled until I have more darks per temperature bucket.
Total integration time: 136 minutes

75% waning gibbous Moon high in the sky

SharpCap 3.1.5219
PIPP 2.5.9
Deep Sky Stacker 3.3.2
StarTools 1.3.5.289