I wanted to include the Perseus molecular cloud in the same extent as the California Nebula, but it didn't quite fit in the 1.5x-crop-factor field of view of my Fuji + Samyang 135mm lens, so I shot a mosaic of 4 panels. I thought snct astro did a great job framing the extent here (
flic.kr/p/2kcoAZu), so I imitated their framing.
Panels were 26, 30, 22, and 37 x 1 min integrations and overlapped substantially, so most areas were covered by more than one panel. I also added 50 x 1 min of imagery of the Perseus Molecular Cloud from Nov. 20, 2019 (
flic.kr/p/2hNZ6iA). So in total this is 165 minutes worth of data.
Fujifilm X-T10, Samyang 135mm f/2.0 ED UMC @ f2.0, ISO 1600, tracking with iOptron SkyTracker Pro, stacking of individual panels done with DeepSkyStacker, flattening of individual panels and mosaicking done with Astro Pixel Processor, editing in GIMP.
Skies were Bortle 3/4 for the 4 panels shot on Dec. 5, 2020, and Bortle 2/3 for the 50 exposures from Nov. 20, 2019.
It was fun discovering the planetary nebula NGC 1514 below the California Nebula as I processed this. Even though it's tiny at 135mm, it was very apparent that it was a planetary nebula rather than a star.
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