Chameleon Dark Cloud (Brian Boyle)

Chameleon Dark Cloud

Even more so than its Northern counterpart, the South Celestial Pole region is rarely imaged.

Nevertheless, it contains some rather beautiful and impressive molecluar clouds complexes. Last year I managed to image part of the Chameleon molecular cloud complex with my Esprit 100, but I though I would go for a wider field with my Nikon lens 200mm f2 lens. More or less same aperture, but 6 times the field size. [I tend to think in terms of field-size and not f-ratio - at lest for the final result. I certainly think of f-ratio when I am trying to focus the &@*! thing.]

Despite some moon at the start of the night, it was the first totally clear night this year. - albeit with a heavy dew an hour before dawn.

In the end I managed just over 5hours on the complex and I am quite pleased with the final result. Even if was arrived at a little by accident due to a "mistake" I made in post-processing, which improved the image greatly.

The plate-solve solution reveals little more than a couple of IC objects and a few bright stars. More than that, I only know of one named nebula here - the thumbprint nebula, a tiny mark (at this focal length) just NE of centre.

To me, the whole complex has a very imposing feel, rather like background to one of those romanic era paintings. "Victory Rising" perhaps?

Original
B
D
Final
E

B

Description: I was just re-processing this one from a few months back, adn when I came to upload I saw that an image of the Chameleon "V" was an APOD. Congrats to Dong Liang for his image.

Uploaded: ...

D

Description: And a starless version...

Uploaded: ...

E

Description: In honour of today's APOD, I decided to have another go at an image I did a year ago. It was one of my favourites, but clearly I still need to work a little on my post-processing to get the AB recogntion.

Uploaded: ...

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	7124152
PixInsight job	NJWB7SJD75RH4O6VXKQCOCX9LBJOMLI1
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	12h33m18s.16
RA (top/left)	13h29m36s.45
RA (top/right)	11h43m08s.39
RA (bottom/right)	09h57m40s.58
RA (bottom/left)	15h03m12s.15

Dec (center)	-80°22′08″.3
Dec (top/left)	-74°49′47″.9
Dec (top/right)	-74°40′34″.5
Dec (bottom/right)	-84°11′03″.4
Dec (bottom/left)	-84°35′58″.2

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