Best Image Yet?

That's an opening statement!  Let's rewind a couple of weeks.  Earlier in January we had a week of clear night sky with little to no moon.  Further back still, we had another, solitary night of clear sky when I decided to attempt an image of a nebula I had never imaged before.  The Soul Nebula was the target for that single night of imaging.  Enthused by decent weather, eager to continue using my Altair 26c and keen to use some new processing tools within PixInsight, I put together a reasonable first attempt at the nebula.  There was plenty wrong with it, but there was so much more right with it.  My framing was off and I managed to cut a little bit on one edge, but what that experience did show me was how I could frame other targets within the field of view of the 26c camera.

Skip forward from that single night and I found myself at the start of a run of 5 nights on the bounce of clear, cold and near moonless sky.  In the intervening time, I started to think about my next target.  Ultimately, there was little to really think about.  I had always wanted to image the near neighbour of the Soul Nebula, the Heart Nebula.  I think it's such a stunning target to image and I have seen so many amazing versions of it.  Once, a few years ago, I tried to image it with my 183c Hypercam.  The image turned out OK, but I didn't capture anywhere near a large enough area of the sky.  In fact, I tagged the image the "Heart of the Heart" because the only thing I did manage to capture was the very centre of the nebula.  It was unrecognisable to most with the exception of those with a particularly keen eye.

I'd also read that the Heart Nebula, or IC1805 to give it its' designation, was worth giving time to.  Not just in the processing phase, but importantly, in the data acquisition phase too.  Readers of some of my blog pages may recall that often, I base my imaging on a total of 3 hours of data collection because it can be unusual to get prolonged periods of clear, still nights consistent with one another.  Alas though, this is what I was presented with.  So, I hatched to plan to go imaging and collect as much data as I could over 3 consecutive nights.  In total some 213 individual sub frames of 98 seconds each were collected, giving a total exposure time of light frames of just over 5 and 3/4 hours.  The most amount of time I had ever given to a single image.  I could have collected a bunch more data.  I had the opportunity for another 2 nights of imaging time, but I decided to keep it to 3 favouring the 2 remaining clear nights for other projects.

Finally, 2 weeks after I started the project to make this image, I have finished a first version of it.  I am so pleased with it and very proud of what I have managed to produce.  I think processing a second version, using some different techniques and a slightly different colour palette might prove to be beneficial, but that can wait.

In the mean time, this I believe is my best image yet.  So happy!

IC 1805 - The Heart Nebula in the constellation of Cassiopeia.  It's over 7500 light years away and depending where you get your information, between 200 and 330 light years from one side to the other.

The tech bit...

Equipment:

Altair Starwave 80 ED-R

Altair 26c OSC camera

Altair Quadband filter

SkyWatcher EQ6-R Pro mount

Data:

213 x 98 second light frames

50 flat dark frames

50 dark frames

50 flat frames

Calibrated, stacked and processed in PixInsight.