20220303 - Sh2-290 - A Cancerous Planetary Nebula, shrouded in dust

*** Dedicated to my family and all who suffer from this dreadful disease ***

What’s in the picture(s)
Quote: “Sh2-290 / Abell 31 is an ancient planetary nebula in the constellation of Cancer. A planetary nebula is created when a low-mass star blows off its outer layers at the end of its life. Sh2-290 is one of the largest known planetary nebulae, with a diameter of about 7 parsecs. The bluish interior is from energized oxygen atoms. The bright side of the nebula is due to its interaction with ambient interstellar gas.”

What was the experience
By reaching for the impossible, we achieve the improbable...
Given my learning journey and my renewed passion for astrophotography last year, I want to reach for some of the more difficult objects, faint, less common …

Sh2-290, a faint planetary nebula, captured over several days, totalling 10 hours of integration with an f6.5 scope, and even then not a lot of signal on the integrated image. Maybe that’s also the reasons that I’ve been struggling with the background noise in this image. The DSO seemed to have turned out reasonable ok, some nice detail and colours of the immense gas shell. But there still appears a large irregular dust cloud surrounding the object, in spite of darks, flats, bias, ABE, DBE, etc … Can’t imagine this to be interstellar gas, but … who knows 🤔

How it was done
Scope: TS140 APO (FL 910mm)
Mount: CEM70G
Camera: ASI2600MM Pro
Photons: 20220222-25/0303 HO 62x 59x
Processing: PixInsight (Mac)

What have I learned from this
Trying to balance the ambition to go for a diversity of objects and also for longer integration times, is a balancing exercise, involving patience. I am learning to balance my patience … 😎

Make to the most of the life you have. It’s too short to waste it on irrelevant things 😔

Clear Skies everybody! 🤩✨🔭

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