Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Cepheus (Cep)  ·  Contains:  NGC 7380
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NGC7380 The Wizard Nebula - Mosaic, niteman1946
NGC7380 The Wizard Nebula - Mosaic
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NGC7380 The Wizard Nebula - Mosaic

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
NGC7380 The Wizard Nebula - Mosaic, niteman1946
NGC7380 The Wizard Nebula - Mosaic
Powered byPixInsight

NGC7380 The Wizard Nebula - Mosaic

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Description

NGC 7380 (also known as the Wizard Nebula) is an open cluster discovered by Caroline Herschel in 1787. William Herschel included his sister's discovery in his catalog, and labelled it H VIII.77. It is also known as 142 in the 1959 Sharpless catalog (Sh2-142). This reasonably large nebula is located in Cepheus. It is extremely difficult to observe visually, usually requiring very dark skies and an O-III filter. [Source: Wikipedia].

What powers are being wielded in the Wizard Nebula? Gravitation strong enough to form stars, and stellar winds and radiations powerful enough to create and dissolve towers of gas. Located only 8,000 light years away, the Wizard nebula surrounds developing open star cluster NGC 7380. Visually, the interplay of stars, gas, and dust has created a shape that appears to some like a fictional medieval sorcerer. The active star forming region spans about 100 light years, making it appear larger than the angular extent of the Moon. The Wizard Nebula can be located with a small telescope toward the constellation of the King of Aethiopia (Cepheus). Although the nebula may last only a few million years, some of the stars being formed may outlive our Sun. [Source: APOD].

The image was captured with the Meade 12"LX200, using the Atik 383L+ mono at F7.16 (i.e. 2182mm FL). Astronomik's Ha was used for the luminance. All subs were taken at 1x1 bin, -10C, and 10 minutes each.

Ha : 111 subs (18.50 hr) on Oct 29th, 30th, Nov 1st, and 7th thru 10th.

This was a mosaic of two tiles. Half of the total subs came from the upper tile and half from the lower tile.

Processing was done with PixInsight, following this work flow:

1. Process Upper and Lower tiles thru Integration.

2. Separately Star Align using appropriate settings, bringing both integrated tiles into registration with each other.

3. Combine registered images with Gradient Merge Mosaic with appropriate settings.

4. Finish out combined image with normal processing steps.

North is up. This is a very slight crop.

This product (thumbnail "D") is a mosaic made from the upper and lower images (see thumbnails "original" and "C"). This is my first try at mosaic and I had a lot of misgivings about the optical equipment being able to provide adequate imaging for the task. I used the powerful Sequence Generator Pro for acquiring the appropriate "tiles", and the equally powerful PixInsight for processing the two tile assemblies into the final image.

I am genuinely pleased with the final product.

Comments

Revisions

  • NGC7380 The Wizard Nebula - Mosaic, niteman1946
    Original
  • NGC7380 The Wizard Nebula - Mosaic, niteman1946
    C
  • Final
    NGC7380 The Wizard Nebula - Mosaic, niteman1946
    D

Sky plot

Sky plot

Histogram

NGC7380 The Wizard Nebula - Mosaic, niteman1946