IC 2631: Reflection Nebula for Now…but a Kraken Lies in Wait (Alex Woronow)

IC 2631: Reflection Nebula for Now…but a Kraken Lies in Wait

IC 2631: Reflection Nebula for Now…but a Kraken Lies in Wait

OTA: PW17 f/6.8
Camera: QHY 600 Pro
Observatory: Deep Sky West, Chile
Date of Capture: Apr. 2023
Date of Processing: Sept. 2023

Exposures:
R: 20 x 300 sec
G: 20 x 300
B: 26 x 300
L: 51 x 300
Total Exposure time: 9.75 hours
Image Width: 41.7 arc-minutes

Processing Tools:
1.   Commercial: PixInsight, Topaz (Studio2, Photo AI2), Photo Director 365, Aurora HDR, Luminar Neo, 3DLUT Creator
2.   Pixinsight Addons: NoiseXTerminator, BlurXTerminator, StarXTerminator, Normalize Scale Gradient
3.   My Scripts: NB_Assistant, AC_Restar, Subframe Weighting Tool (Excel w/ J. Hunt)

Target Description:
     Made famous by repeated publication of Hubble and ESO images, this reflection nebula hosts at least one pre-main sequence star and probably many such stars. When that star (and others) ignite, the Kraken ("…a legendary sea monster of enormous size" Wikipedia) will be released by this new T-Tauri star: hypersonic winds and intense UV radiation will ionize the surrounding cloud, becoming a bright, young emission nebula.
     If you want to be an expert on early stellar evolution, study this manuscript: https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/310/2/360/1047159

Statistics:
Distance: 500 light-years
Apparent Magnitude: 13?
Average Surface Magnitude: 23?
Pixel Span at Target: 0.9 trillion km

Alex Woronow

Final
Original
B

B

Title: Annotated

Uploaded: ...

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	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
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	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Backyard
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Other
Unknown

The “AstroBin Image of the Day and Top Picks”, or IOTD/TP, is a long-running system to promote beautiful, interesting, peculiar, or otherwise amazing astrophotographs, with a focus on technical excellence. Learn more.

Submitted The date and time when you submitted this image for IOTD/TP consideration.	...
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Status	Basic failed
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	8517260
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

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