Hello, astroimagers! This image is the first stacked image taken with the Milwaukee Astronomical Society's new ZWO ASI2600MM Pro! Taken on a quiet night in the extremely light-polluted skies near Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the image features IC 1318, otherwise considered the Butterfly Nebula, and the star, Sadr. Before the 2600, the computerized telescope we used, nicknamed F-scope, had an ASI 1600MM Pro, a camera that simply did not fulfill our ambitions. As the most active user of the telescope, I can only be ecstatic seeing the improvements in (1) the field size and (2) the quality of the images! 

The Butterfly Nebula is an HII emission nebula in the constellation Cygnus, near the star Sadr. The nebula, officially cataloged as IC 1318, obtains the nickname "Butterfly" from the two distinct "wings" existing in the gas (we often regard constellations as the preeminent representation of human pattern sensing, yet there are innumerable nebulae that we have nicknamed so based upon how they look). I imaged the Sadr Region on "F-scope" back in October 2020; that first day I imaged the region was the first time I had ever used a computerized telescope. 

Great thanks to @Gabe Shaughnessy, ​@Dennis Roscoe, Ph.D., @Tamas Kriska, @Chad Andrist, and @Paul Borchardt for helping organize and complete this new project for our club! We will be adding a ZWO ASI6200MM to our larger computerized telescope soon! Because I often image on there as well, expect another "first light" post in the next few weeks!

The "revision" is a comparison to the image of the Sadr Region using F-scope with the ZWO ASI1600MM Pro last year (October 2020). The exposure time is only 2 hours, not 3 hours, so the comparisons are not the best. Even so, it is evident that the larger well depth, higher quality, larger field, lower read noise, and higher peak QE made this image far more incredible than the 1600MM Pro image.

Note: the revision (1600MM image) has flats, whereas the 2600MM image does not (we do not have a flat panel at the observatory, so we have to wait for another member to bring theirs). Future images will implement flats, yes.