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A little gem in Cepheus: NGC7129 with NGC7142 in RGB

Category:Deep Sky
Published:
2062
A little gem in Cepheus: NGC7129 with NGC7142 in RGBNGC 7133IC 5132IC 5133NGC 7129NGC 7142IC 5134
Resolution:
3586x2710 px
File size:
4471 KB

Photo description / processing

Super happy with this image! These two objects together are probably my favourite targets but I've been reluctant for so long to try and image them. With such short nights and poor weather, I can't commit to long projects, and I wasn't sure I could pull out something decent in the three hours of the current UK night (midnight to about 3 am when it starts dawning). It turns out that under a 50% moon with just 2h of RGB and 0.5 hours H-a (very weak to be fair) I'm very happy with the result! The processing has been quite challenging, The nebulosity of NGC7129 is quite hard to pull out with such little data. For a start, I processed light frames without darks, in an attempt to spare as much as possible the faint signal of the reflection nebula then once I finished to process the RGB data, in the end, I used the B channel - the one with better S/N -as an artificial luminance layer, and that helped a lot. The H-a data is very noisy and doesn't add much to the picture but I've included it as revision anyway.

Technical information

Telescope/Lens
Sky-Watcher Quattro 8S
Camera
ZWO ASI1600MM Pro
Mount
Sky-Watcher NEQ6 Pro
Location
Stockport, United Kingdom

Light pollution

Orange, Bortle 6 zone

Exposure

  • 15 × 180″ · ISO/Gain: 140 · Red
  • 15 × 180″ · ISO/Gain: 140 · Green
  • 15 × 180″ · ISO/Gain: 140 · Blue

Total exposure: 2 h 15 m

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