NGC 2371 (also known as NGC 2372) is a 13th magnitude bipolar planetary nebula in the constellation Gemini. At a distance of about 4400 light years, this PN spans only about 1 arcminute in diameter, making it a tough target even at long focal length.
This image was a late-night project captured with the C11 EdgeHD at f/7 only because I had the 0.7x reducer in place for my early evening project. Otherwise, I might have attempted to shoot at f/10 to get more pixels onto the surface of the nebula.
I previously imaged this PN from a city backyard in 2017 with 3rd magnitude skies, with less than 3 hours of total integration. This new image was captured from my Bortle 4+ backyard in upstate NY. I captured 11+ hours of integration this time, and I threw out over half of the Oiii subs due to less than ideal seeing. This image also benefited from a newly acquired Chroma 3 nm Oiii filter. To my disappointment, none of these factors resulted in a deeper image. However, I was able to apply aggressive deconvolution this time due to higher S:N ratio in the brighter parts of the image, resolving some really small details. It might be fun to run this one through Topaz AI at some point and see what kind of details Topaz thinks are actually there.
I am especially happy with some of the tiny details in the disk that match some of the features in the Hubble images of the past. For comparison, check out the Hubble images of this tiny DSO at the following links.
https://cdn.spacetelescope.org/archives/images/screen/opo0813a.jpghttps://cdn.spacetelescope.org/archives/images/screen/potw1933a.jpg
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