This is another project with my friend Axel. We decided to park our wide-field setups on this region for several nights, in an insane attempt to photograph space dust from our light polluted backyards.

Revision B illustrates how little signal we had to work with. It shows my RGB data after full calibration, gradient correction, and simple stretching. There is barely anything to see! I am honestly surprised by the result we were able to achieve, and didn’t expect this was possible from our light polluted homes. Then again, the amount of post-processing we had to do was enormous. Dark skies should make this subject a lot easier.

Axel’s version of this project can be found on his AstroBin page. 


About the objects
Sh2-126 is a large and moderately bright H-alpha cloud in the lesser known constellation of Lacerta, about 10 degrees away from the famous North-America nebula (NGC 7000). The red emission nebula is surrounded by a ton of brown and blue dust, which is very faint and typically only visible from dark skies. The center of this field contains LBN 437, also known as the Gecko Nebula or Lizard Nebula.

Technical info
I used my Sigma 105mm f/2.8 EX DG lens @f/4 with the ASI1600MM-Cool, which produces a field of about 9.6 x 7.3 degrees. Axel used a Canon EF 200mm f/2.8 L II lens @f/4.5 with his ASI1600MM-Cool and focused on LBN 437. His field of view is obviously a lot smaller, but the optical performance of the Canon lens is much better than my Sigma lens.

Deep reference images from dark skies were used to carefully place DBE points and to preserve as much real structure as possible during gradient removal. Extensive processing and noise reduction was needed to bring out the extremely faint brown and blue reflection nebulae. Blue star bloat from my optics was also reduced with the help of star masks and curves. Addition of H-alpha data completely changed the look of the image, since the signal-to-noise ratio of the H-alpha data was a lot better.

Revision E shows the combined data sets. Both fields were registered and combined in PixInsight using the GradientMergeMosaic process. Stars from Axel’s setup were used in the center of the frame. This resulted in a much sharper central image section with greatly improved star color, lots of additional small stars and a small boost in nebula detail. 

My data:
Optics: Sigma 105mm f/2.8 EX DG @f/4
Camera: ZWO ASI1600MM-C
Location: Herent, Belgium (Bortle 7)
R 81x180s
G 65x180s
B 69x180s
H 56x300s

Axel data:
Optics: Canon EF 200mm f/2.8 L II USM @f/4.5
Camera: ZWO ASI1600MM-C
Location: Paris, France (Bortle 8)
R 60x120s
G 64x120s
B 63x120s
L 127x120s