SH2-129 and OU4: the Squid Nebula (Roger Muro)

SH2-129 and OU4: the Squid Nebula

The Squid Nebula is quite special to me as it represents one core principle of this great hobby of ours: The fact that hidden in plain sight, there is a whole universe to explore. OU4 was discovered in 2011 (in an area of the sky that had been explored and surveyed before) by exposing for a long time in the OIII region, the sole emission of the Squid. It's quite fascinating to me that on a pure Ha image the Squid is for all intended purposes, invisible.

I started the image in 2022 from West Palm Beach, FL and quickly realized that for my quality goal, dark skies were a requirement. I moved my setup to a remote observatory in NM and started collecting data in late 2022; a total of 72hrs of exposure had been collected by the end of the year in the course of 34 nights. The split at this moment in time was 29 hrs. of Ha and 43 hrs. of OIII.

In 2023, the setup fully operational from the beginning of the Squid season, I collected 260 hrs. during the course of 63 nights. At the end of the project, I had with me 332 hrs. of exposure divided in 151 hrs. of Ha and 180 hrs. of OIII. I had to stop not because I was afraid to break the 100 nights effort into a project (insane as it is), it was the lack of hard drive that was stopping me. Once everything was said and done the Squid folder occupies a massive 3.5TB of HDD space which overflows my 4TB NVME. An effort was made to select only the best frames, which meant both Blink and SFS in PI were used to select the very best which led to a final image composition of 92hrs. of Ha and 125 hrs. of OIII.

My goal was to break the exposure record on Astrobin and present the most natural image of OU4 in existence, through maximum effort. I hope you enjoy it in full resolution, the way it is meant to be enjoyed. Comments welcome and clear skies.

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Title: The Squid Nebula in OIII

Description: Some of the faintest details can be seen in this image, without the Ha channel interference. Check out the arches at the bottom right of the image...

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Status	Basic success
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Astrometry.net job	8629041
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SH2-129 and OU4: the Squid Nebula

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SH2-129 and OU4: the Squid Nebula

SH2-129 and OU4: the Squid Nebula

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