IC 2118 (Witch Head Nebula) (Mark Killion)

IC 2118 (Witch Head Nebula)

Revision title: IC 2118 (The Witch Head Nebula)

I have been wanting to revisit this nebula for 3 years. My scope did not have a wide enough field of view to frame it properly. Earlier this year I obtained a William Optics Redcat 71 which has a 350mm focal length. This is perfect for a great many objects in our skies. On 11/23 and on 11/25 I made attempts to image this DSO. Unfortunately, clouds were in the way on the first night and I only got a few frames at ISO 800 at 300 seconds with my Canon Ra camera and the Redcat. But the evening of 11/25/22 was good and I shot the nebula with an ISO of 1600 and for 300 seconds. I took 30 light frames that night. Also, I took darks and flats to combine in Deep Sky Stacker. I used a few frames from the previous night to combine in DSS. I guided with a Williams Optics 50mm guide scope, and I used PHD2 and APT as the guiding software. I dithered between each light frame.The lights, darks, flats and bias frames were stacked in Deep Sky Stacker and the resulting combined image was processed in Photoshop. I did add a star spike to Rigel for effect. I did use a light pollution filter and the image session was performed from my back patio in Illinois.

Original
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Final
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Title: IC 2118 (The Witch Head Nebula)

Description: I drove the black point too low in my first rendition of this object, so I went back to the post processing phase and adjusted my black sample points for a higher RGB count. This brought out a lot more of the red nebulosity surrounding the nebula. I added a star spike to Rigel and 5 other stars, but I do not feel this comprised the image too drastically. I did use masking techniques to mask the galaxies, and this preserved the structural detail in them. I feel this final image is more representative of this area of space.

Uploaded: ...

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Title: IC 2118 (The Witch Head Nebula)

Description: I reprocessed the data that I acquired in 2022 to arrive at this final image. I used PixInsight in combination with Photoshop. My focus was on the background, the galaxies around IC 2118 and the star Rigel.

Uploaded: ...

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	9039871
PixInsight job	Q87DMT6BMBK8J3WD4RW9RL5ZYWNATK2B
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	05h03m45s.74
RA (top/left)	04h59m03s.65
RA (top/right)	05h17m46s.36
RA (bottom/right)	05h08m22s.87
RA (bottom/left)	04h49m43s.15

Dec (center)	-08°29′05″.10
Dec (top/left)	-11°45′43″.7
Dec (top/right)	-08°16′19″.3
Dec (bottom/right)	-05°12′17″.10
Dec (bottom/left)	-08°40′03″.3

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