Celestial hemisphere:  Southern  ·  Constellation: Scorpius (Sco)  ·  Contains:  IC 4628
Prawn Nebula, John R Carter, Sr.
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Prawn Nebula

Prawn Nebula, John R Carter, Sr.
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Prawn Nebula

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Description

Wikipedia: Prawn Nebula, also known as IC 4628, is an emission nebula located in the Sagittarius Arm of the Milky Way, around 6,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Scorpius. It forms part of the tail of the "False Comet" anchored by the bright open cluster NGC 6231.

This was a fluke image for me. Extremely low on the horizon at 4:05 AM - just barely above the observatory wall. No time to take more than a single exposure.

Thanks to what I have learned about PixInsight, I managed to get something out of it anyway.

The original image was extremely noisy. I separated the stars from the background and processed them separately, then merged.

What I'm not pleased with is the focus. The autofocus of N.I.N.A. didn't do as good this time as I would have liked. Pixel-peeping shows holes in the stars as a result.

Comments

Revisions

  • Prawn Nebula, John R Carter, Sr.
    Original
  • Prawn Nebula, John R Carter, Sr.
    B
  • Final
    Prawn Nebula, John R Carter, Sr.
    D

B

Description: This is a retake using 42 subs combined with darks, flats, and darkflats.
The centering is off a bit from the original.
Again, the image is barely above where my telescope can see over the wall of the observatory. I would normally not bother with anything this low.
As to it being called the Prawn Nebula, it took me a long time see it like that.

Uploaded: ...

D

Description: Inverted and sharpened. Replaces a previous version C with not so much color saturation.

Uploaded: ...

Sky plot

Sky plot

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Prawn Nebula, John R Carter, Sr.