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Photographer:

benjaminlaw

Location of Photo:

Stouffville, Ontario, Canada

Date/Time of photo:

May and June 2022

Equipment:

80mm telescope, 294MM mono camera, Ha, O, RGB filters

Description:

Here is another challenge attempted from Bortle 7 backyard in Southern Ontario, Canada. This is the flying bat and squid nebula in HOORGB. The squid nebula (Ou4) in the middle is extremely faint. The field of view of my telescope does not show the entire "flying bat" nebula (Sh2-129) It has been a relatively recent discovery for the squid nebula, which was discovered in 2011 by French astronomer Nicolas Outters. The Squid is thought to lie within Sh2-129 about 2,300 light-years away, which makes the Squid about 50 light-years in length. The red portion of the nebula (flying bat) comes from large clouds of hydrogen excited by nearby star. The color of the squid mainly comes from clouds of oxygen. Since the squid is extremely faint, it was challenging to grab enough data through my Bortle 7 backyard. Processing is also very challenging but I managed to bring out the squid better than I thought I can. Master Ha, Oiii are processed separately. StarNet was applied to remove stars from them. After combining into HOO, a layer of star colors is applied. This is one of my longest integrated exposure to date, 31 hours in total. Tech details: Scope: Sky-Watcher Evostar 80 Camera: ASI294MM-P Filters: 2" Optolong Ha, Oiii, R, G, B. (HOORGB format) Integrated time: 5 hours Ha, 25 hours Oiii, 1 hour RGB (Over multiple rare clear nights of course!) Exposure times per frame: 300s and 600s for Narrowband, 180s for RGB Gain: 200

Website:

https://www.astrobin.com/t7qi5x/