Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Cygnus (Cyg)  ·  Contains:  NGC 7008  ·  PK093+05.2
NGC 7008 Fetus Nebula, Jerry Macon
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NGC 7008 Fetus Nebula

Acquisition type: Lucky imaging
NGC 7008 Fetus Nebula, Jerry Macon
Powered byPixInsight

NGC 7008 Fetus Nebula

Acquisition type: Lucky imaging

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Description

CDK20: FL 2280mm,  F/4.5,  0.34 arcsec/pixel raw
Imaged on nights of 9/18/2022, 9/19/2022.
Chroma RGB 50mm Unmounted:  5781 x 5"

This image is one of my first lucky imaging runs using the new lucky imaging plug-in feature of NINA which allows rapid collection of very short images.
This image uses 5 second exposures on the ASI6200mm, which normally outputs 62mpixel images.  When doing thousands of these the disk space and processing overhead are enormous.  Since images like this one are very small (NGC 7008 is 1.4 arcmin is diameter), a full frame image is a big PITA.
Using NINA's new lucky imaging exposure mode, I have taken images as short as 0.1 second each, producing 520 images every minute of size 1600x1600, which is 1/25th the size of the full frame image.  This is exceptionally low overhead.

Normal overhead collection for a full frame image on the ASI6200mm with NINA is about 6 seconds per image, so in normal mode you can take about 5 full frame 5 second images per minute.  With the NINA lucky imaging plugin, I get 12 1600x1600 pixel images per minute, huge improvement.  For much shorter exposures like 0.5 seconds, I get 12 times as many images in the same time, not to mention the dramatically faster time for the final processing.

I have found that 0.5 second exposures are great for very bright PNs, longer for the dimmer ones.  NGC 7008 is rather dim at magnitude 13.0, so I used 5 second exposures.

NGC 7008 (PK 93+5.2), also known as the Fetus Nebula is a planetary nebula with a diameter of approximately 1 light-year located at a distance of 2800 light years[2] in northern Cygnus. It was discovered by William Herschel in 1787, in Slough, England. NGC 7008 (H I-192) is included in the Astronomical League's Herschel 400 observing program.
(Wikipedia)

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NGC 7008 Fetus Nebula, Jerry Macon