930 LY

An oh so rare these days attempt at a target I have not imaged before. I saw some really beautiful work on this target on Astrobin and decided to try it since it was in the right part of the sky. It turns out to be incredibly dim, so after some work at 300 s in Hα I used 600 s subs for the this and still didn’t pick up very much. The nebulosity is just barely above background. Despite using narrowband filters, I suspect I need darker sky for this target (it sits within the light dome of Provo, Utah even at the best times of year) and as always it would of course benefit from more integration. A little web research indicates this is an old planetary nebula, some call the Valentine Rose.

Date: 21, 24 Aug 2019
Subject: Sh2-174, Valentine Rose Nebula
Scope: AT8IN+High Point Scientific Coma Corrector
Filters: ZWO 31 mm diameter unmounted 7 nm Hα, OIII
Mount: EQ-6 (EQMOD 2.000j)+PEC
Guiding: Orion Thin Off-axis Guider + ASI120MM-mini +PHD 2.6.6 (Win 10 ASCOM)
Camera: ASI1600MM-Cool, -20 °C, Gain 139 Offset 21
Acquisition: Sequence Generator Pro 3.0.3.198
Exposure: 31x300 and 11x600 Hα, 21x600 OIII
Stacking: Deep Sky Stacker 4.2.2 (64-bit) dark+flat+bias, κ-σ stacking with κ = 1.5.
Processing: StarTools 1.4.352: Software binned 2x2, cropped, wiped, developed, HDR optimized, deconvoluted, and untrack denoised the Hα and OIII data separately. Combined using Annie’s Astro Actions HO Bicolor process. Many cycles of Curves & Levels, saturation boost, capped by some layer-masked Levels. AstroFrame.