Revised 1/6/2023:
One of many I am revisiting with the new, better methods for processing.  I decided to present this with a higher dynamic range than the original.  This was achievable with the original subs but starting with a new stack achieve by using WBPP and a separate registration and integration.  This resulted in a lot better preserved detailed and reduced posterization effect that I got with the old methods in the first version.  Not so noticable at intende scale, but makes me happy that the image doesn't break down until one zooms in considerably.  And when it does break down, it is not catastophic, it just looks like empty magnification as one my expect to get when using a too high a power eyepiece in a telescope.  That is one of my goals during the reprossessing project I am on with old data.

Original Description:
I have been wanting to capture some of the interesting molecular clouds on the poleward side of Cepheus and some open skies over the last few days gave me the opportunity. This target is still pretty low now, and with the short number of dark hours, this target is still a challenge now. It will get better over the next month, but I couldn't wait! Clearly the low altitude is impacting some of my focus numbers, with improvement deeper into the session each of the two nights that I collected data on this.

This area includes a number of dense molecular clouds embedded within a more tenuous cloud that is clearly transparent enough to allow us to see a number of distant galaxies through them. The collection of dark dense clouds make up what some call the angler fish nebula. This one does have a pretty strong resemblance to that fish. These dense clouds contain a significant number of interesting objects related to star birth activity. This includes Herbig Haro objects, young stellar objects, strong IR emitters and even radio sources. There appears to be a very slight red glow in the upper left of the frame that may be H-alpha, but I could not find anything to support that, so this may just be a gradient that I should have removed.

This image includes data from two nights. Because I do not leave my camera on between sessions, I had a bit more rotation between jobs and this resulted in the loss of some of the peripheral field with has some nice features. I probably will process one of the nights independently and post it under this image page when I get to it.

As some of you know, I am particularly interested in these star-forming regions and hope to explore these with IR and photometry in the near future. So I will be doing a fair number of these sorts of things in the visible to wet my appetite for when the day comes!

This is the first time in over a month that the weather has cooperated for me. In the meantime, I received a new spacer for my RASA camera adaptor with the hope of dialing in my backspacing. As I see it, I have more work to do. A bit worse than prior to swapping the spacer. But now I have room to move with the adjustable spacer. I made a tweak on the new object that I am imaging tonight and I can see that I still need to work on this! Fun!