With no moon and some clear nights, I decided to go for something that really was a challenge, I could only get a maximum of 3 hours before it disappeared behind some houses, I would have loved to have grabbed 20 hours on this but it wasn't to be for now!
I captured some nice RGB for the stars as well, but I am having problems apply it without upsetting the background, so more playing is needed :-)
It really is faint from my Bortle 5 skies, and as my first planetary image, it has come out OK....ish
Guiding was a mare with gusts of up to 25mph, so I removed the shroud from my truss and it helped a little.
Here's the bumf: -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medusa_NebulaThe Medusa Nebula is a large planetary nebula in the constellation of Gemini on the Canis Minor border. It is also known as Abell 21 and Sharpless 2-274. It was originally discovered in 1955 by UCLA astronomer George O. Abell, who classified it as an old planetary nebula. The braided serpentine filaments of glowing gas suggests the serpent hair of Medusa found in ancient Greek mythology.
Until the early 1970s, the Medusa was thought to be a supernova remnant. With the computation of expansion velocities and the thermal character of the radio emission, Soviet astronomers in 1971 concluded that it was most likely a planetary nebula.
As the nebula is so big, its surface brightness is very low, with surface magnitudes of between +15.99 and +25 reported. Because of this most websites recommend at least an 8-inch (200 mm) telescope with an [O III] filter to find this object although probably possible to image with smaller apertures.
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