The last few nights were very promising. So I decided to go for a long time project during this summer. I recently bought a TS APO 115/800 and put my ASI294MM on it. With a 0.79x reducer I get a focal length of about 632mm at an f ratio around 5. A quick look into Stellarium offers the opportunity to record the giant squid nebula, which fits this focal length very well. The milky way begins to rise over the eastern horizon (at least at my location) and I will be able to photograph this subject for the next months.

The OIII nebula, which seems to be caused by the triple star formation in its center, is very faint and was discovered just 12 years ago. It is a good example of things that amateur astonomers may discover even nowadays. In HOO (that I will aim to) the blue mapped oxygen color is a nice contrast to the then red flying bat nebula SH2-129 that surrounds this area. The red Ha light in my image is just a part of the whole bat.

After about 16 hours OIII and only 5 hours Ha, this first version is just a combination of the Ha and OIII data. It was really hard to keep looking at the nebula, because in the single frames of OIII data, there was barely something visible. If you know where to look for, you might only see some faint glow in the lighter part of a 20 minute exposure. I didn't even know, if the framing was correct and the nebula fits the frame exactly the way I wanted it to fit. I never experienced such a hard proof of concept and it was really hard to have faith in the project. But I kept imaging. Today, I gave it a first try and stacked the subs using PixInsight. It turned out very well and I didn't expect this result.

It is just an actual snapshot of this project. After 5 clear nights in may 2023, the moon is now too bright to use filters other than the Ha. So I will collect Ha data the next nights if possible. In about a week, I may be able to collect even more OIII data to get rid of the heavy noise that is still visible in the image. I also have to get the LRGB data to give some colors to the stars. But the nights are still getting shorter for a month and there is not much darkness where one can collect the really faint stuff in the night sky.

I am really excited to see this image improve. Maybe you are interested in this project too. I will post new versions if there is more data available. So stay tuned...