NGC 6888 Crescent Nebula HOO @ HVO & Dark Site (SoDakAstronomyNut)

NGC 6888 Crescent Nebula HOO @ HVO & Dark Site

The following is a combined integration of subs taken over two nights at South Dakota Black Hills Astronomical Society's (SDBHAS) Hidden Valley Observatory (HVO - Ha) and their Eastern Dark Site ([OIII] & Ha).

A club member invited me to the dark site where I initially captured a healthy quantity set of [OIII] and then ran out of darkness while capturing the Ha on my AP rig - a Celestron EdgeHD 8 with HyperStar on an EQ6-R Pro mount.

A few days later I was offered to open up HVO and took the opportunity to learn more on how to set up and operate the club’s equipment (Meade LX200 Alt/AZ Fork with Wedge and a 12" RC and an ATIK16200M) to augment my dark site data to see if I could combine the the data from two different setups. In the future I would like to do a set of mosaics at HVO (for the increased detail) and then combine them with the wider FOV subs from my rig. Not as much detail in this image as I would like but I know its a matter of MORE data and time – I am learning. 😛

Astro Pixel Processor (APP) was used to register and stack the narrowband subs since Pixinsight and DSS doesn’t like different size/aspect ratio subs. PixInsight was used for processing (Starnet++, denoise, RGB combine, etc.) Then it was finished off with slight curves, sats and compositing in Photoshop.

Big thanks to to my SDBHAS club mate for the invite to the dark site, opening up HVO and walking me through the set up. Huge thanks also to SDBHAS and South Dakota Space Grant Consortium (SDSGC) for blessing us with the equipment and opportunity.

Schmidt-Cassegrain Telescope (SCT) Imagers
PixInsight Addicts
Imaged with APT
Images from the EdgeHD Series
HyperStar Lens Astrophotography

	Distinct awarded users	Total awarded images
Image of the day
Top picks
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	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Deep sky
Solar system
Extremely wide field
Star trails
Northern lights
Noctilucent clouds
Landscape

	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Backyard
Traveller
Own remote observatory
Amateur hosting facility
Public amaeteur data
Professional, scientific grade data
Mix of multiple sources
Other
Unknown

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	3919926
PixInsight job	3VMDTC4XGOSTM9LWAP396CNAN7QW55SQ
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

RA (center)	20h12m10s.45
RA (top/left)	20h10m51s.96
RA (top/right)	20h11m18s.22
RA (bottom/right)	20h13m29s.46
RA (bottom/left)	20h13m02s.33

Dec (center)	+38°19′54″.4
Dec (top/left)	+38°04′01″.9
Dec (top/right)	+38°39′33″.4
Dec (bottom/right)	+38°35′46″.5
Dec (bottom/left)	+38°00′16″.3

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