Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Lyra (Lyr)  ·  Contains:  IC 1296  ·  M 57  ·  NGC 6720  ·  Ring Nebula
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M57 - the ring, halo and IC1296... almost!, Tom Gray
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M57 - the ring, halo and IC1296... almost!

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
M57 - the ring, halo and IC1296... almost!, Tom Gray
Powered byPixInsight

M57 - the ring, halo and IC1296... almost!

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Description

Not my best image, but my first attempt at 'just about' exposing the faint halo surrounding the bright ring of Messier 57, and the small barred spiral galaxy IC1296 under a bright northern sky.

Imaged at f10 (2000mm) in my 8" SCT, this comprises 20 x 300s exposures. Despite using my Optolong L-eNhance tri-narrow band filter, a hopeless amount of light has leaked through in OIII resulting in a noisy image, together with some amp glow. Time to start my homemade peltier cooler . Aligned in ASTAP the resulting stack was processed in Startools. Two different images were layered - stretching one to bring out the faint halo, whilst retaining a little of the detail in the ring.

As ever, I post all my efforts good and bad, and will try again, under darker skies, in the autumn. Learning points - 300s is too long, even with a NBF, under bright summer skies. Different exposure lengths are required to bring out the detail within the ring and the outer halo / IC 1296.

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Revisions

  • M57 - the ring, halo and IC1296... almost!, Tom Gray
    Original
  • Final
    M57 - the ring, halo and IC1296... almost!, Tom Gray
    B

B

Description: This version uses 85m data drizzled 175% with pixel fraction 0.8 in Meade Autostar Envisage, using frames aligned in ASTAP. I managed to remove the amp glow, and more detail visible in the core, although some artifacts (walking noise) introduced by drizzle, but allowed me to process the core and outer halo/IC1296 as one object.

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M57 - the ring, halo and IC1296... almost!, Tom Gray