Saturday, December 12, 2020

NGC 1491 - Fossil Footprint Nebula

NGC 1491 or Fossil Footprint Nebula (a.k.a. SH2-206 and LBN 704) is listed as a bright emission nebula and HII region on Stellarium.   It is located about 10,700 light-years away in gaseous region in the constellation Perseus on the edge of the Perseus Arm of the Milky Way.  It seems this a popular object to image but i was not aware of until recently.  I shot this over 13 nights do to my limited FOV but I did not mind as I just switched to another object when this went behind some trees.

The object looks really cool especially bright streamers in the center and also the many other streamers throughout the nebula.  The data collection was straight forward despite the many nights, however, what a pain-in-the neck to process.  I used Starnet++ to remove the stars to make the nebula 'easier' to process.  I spent my hours trying to adjust the colors to make it presentable with the typical blue-gold color scheme - at one point there were six versions going on at once including an HOS, however, I came to realize that are not that many blue-gold versions.  The SHO version one out as it produced the sharpest and most detailed view in the main portion of the nebula.  I still like how the HOS version looked so it is attached (Link).  There is a lot of faint nebulosity on the lower right portion of the image which I attempted to bring out more but it looked really bad so I left it faint.  Some others have brought it out  really well, however, they had more than double the exposure time.  Finally, there is an interesting small colorful spot on the right central edge that looks like a planetary nebula or something like it that was in the NB channels.

Also, I made a video on Ionization - Why Nebulae Shine, using demos since I have all of my 'stuff' at home while we are doing remote learning (https://youtu.be/UmIxclwCtvE). 

Dates: 10-30, 11-2, 11-7, 11-8, 11-9, 11-13, 11-14, 11-16, 11-18, 11-20, 11-23, 11-26, 11-28

SHO Version



HOS Version


NGC 1491 (SH2-206 and LBN 704) - Fossil Footprint Nebula 
Dates: 10-30, 11-2, 11-7, 11-8, 11-9, 11-13, 11-14, 11-16, 11-18, 11-20, 11-23, 11-26, 11-28
Camera: ZWO ASI1600MM-Pro Telescope: Astro-Tech AT115EDT 115mm Refractor Telescope
Barlow: None
Focal Length: 805mm
f/7
Focal Reducer: AstroTech Field Flatterner/Focal Reducer
Mount: Orion Sirius
Filter Wheel: ZWO EFW 8 x 1.25"
Filter: ZWO L, R, G, B
Focuser: ZWO EAF
Autoguiding: ASI120 Mini attached to an Agena 50mm Guide Scope/ZWO 60mm Guidescope
Exposure: Ha 57 x 240, OIII 52 x 240, SII 56 x 240, R 29 x 90, G 29 x 90, B 28 x 90
Gain: 139
Offset 21
Temp: 5 C
Processing: APT, NINA, PixInsight, Photoshop, Topaz DeNoiseAI.

https://kurtzeppetello.smugmug.com/
http://astroquest1.blogspot.com/
https://www.astrobin.com/users/kurtzepp/collections/
http://youtube.com/c/AstroQuest1

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