The brightest orange star is the Antares, which represents the head of the constellation Scorpius. This star has surrounded all kinds of nebulae – dark, reflection, emission. Basically, nearly all the colors of the universe can be seen here.
| Telescope | William Optics RedCat 51/250 f4.9 |
| Aperture | 51 mm |
| Focal length | 250 mm |
| Mount | iOptron Skyguider Pro |
| Autoguiding | ZWO 178MM, QHY Mini Guide Scope 30/130 mm |
| Camera | Canon EOS 6Da |
| Filters | none |
| Exposure | 60x120s, ISO 1600 |
| Date | 2022-05-29 |
I went to Crete without a detailed plan on which deep space objects to capture. The primary target was Rho Ophiuchi, which I captured really well. Then I started to think about the next objects. Obviously, if you are in a dark place, you can point your camera nearly anywhere. However, there are some regions full of stars and deep space objects. For example constellation Cygnus, which is sometimes called the Northern Cross. It is located visually on the plane of the Milky Way galactic disk, therefore there are many deep space objects.
Let’s have a look at a wide-field picture captured by a 24 mm lens attached to Canon EOS 6Da:
Let’s zoom a bit by changing the lens to a 50 mm focal length. Here the constellation is perfectly centered:
Let’s zoom further to the central star Sadr by change of the lens to 180 mm focal length:
Let’s keep the focal length 180 mm and let’s have a look at the left star Deneb and very famous North America nebula:
Again, let’s keep the focal length 180 mm and change to perspective to the bottom (eastern) star Aljanah, where the beautiful supernova remnant the Veil nebula is located:
In total, the camera collected 15.5 hours of light and I am happy with the result.
NGC 6726 is a reflection nebula located in the constellation Corona Australis. Visually, there is a deep space neighbor, the Chandelier globular cluster NGC 6723. These deep space objects can be also found on my wide-angle picture of the Milky Way in the left bottom corner .
| Telescope | Newton 150/600 mm |
| Aperture | 150 mm |
| Focal length | 570 mm |
| Mount | Rainbow Astro RST 135 |
| Autoguiding | ZWO 174MM, Guidescope 30 mm |
| Camera | ZWO 071 Pro @-0°C |
| Corrector | TS MaxField |
| Filters | No |
| Exposure | 44x180s, Gain 94, bin 1x1, |
| Date | 2020-09-13 |
Rho Ophiuchi is a triple star system (on the left side of the picture) in the constellation Ophiuchus. The light from the stars is partially absorbed by the gas, which makes the blue reflection nebula visible. A smaller reflection nebula called IC 4603 is located on the right. The picture shows just a small frame of the significantly bigger nebula, called the Rho Ophiuchi complex, which combines star Antares, globular cluster M4, and many more reflection, emission, and dark nebulae. In order to capture the whole complex, one has to use a significantly shorter focal length, like 130 – 200 mm.
The picture was taken under the dark skies of Fuerteventura and it’s a stack of 73 pictures, 3 minutes each, which makes the total integration time 219 minutes.
| Telescope | Newton 150/600 mm |
| Aperture | 150 mm |
| Focal length | 570 mm |
| Mount | Rainbow Astro RST 135 |
| Autoguiding | ZWO 174MM, Guidescope 30 mm |
| Camera | ZWO 071 Pro @-0°C |
| Corrector | TS MaxField |
| Filters | No |
| Exposure | 73x180s, Gain 94, bin 1x1, |
| Date | 2020-07-21 |
These two magnificent nebulae are located visually close to each other in the constellation Sagittarius. This means we are looking in direction of the galactic core of the Milky Way. Trifid Nebula (up left) is a combination of a reflection nebula (blue part), a dark nebula (brown clouds), an emission nebula (red part), and a star cluster. On the other hand, the Lagoon nebula (right side) is an emission nebula – a giant cloud of ionized HII gas. Due to very low southern declination, it’s very difficult to photograph these deep space objects from my home place in Central Europe. Therefore every time I travel south, I take the opportunity and recapture these nebulae. My first attempt of M20 was done with focal length 917 mm, the second one with 630 mm and now I used a gentle focal reducer. Focal length 570 mm allowed me to fit both nebulae into the field of view of APS-C sensor size. The picture is an integration of 213 minutes, taken under the dark skies of Fuerteventura.
| Telescope | Newton 150/600 mm |
| Aperture | 150 mm |
| Focal length | 570 mm |
| Mount | Rainbow Astro RST 135 |
| Autoguiding | ZWO 174MM, Guidescope 30 mm |
| Camera | ZWO 071 Pro @-0°C |
| Corrector | TS MaxField |
| Filters | No |
| Exposure | 71x180s, Gain 94, bin 1x1, |
| Date | 2020-07-18 |
Iris nebula, known as NGC 7023, is a reflection/dark nebula located in constellation Cepheus. It’s 1300 light years far from the Solar system and it has 6 light years in diameter. In the middle of the nebula rules so called baby star, which is only few thousand years old. The star was created partially from the gas which is now illuminated.
The picture was taken under dark skies of Greek island Karpathos during my 2019 expedition. Unfortunately, the weather was very bad. There wasn’t a single cloud on the sky, but it was extremely windy, therefore I got only one single steady night and this night I wanted to capture also other deep space objects. Therefore the picture is a stack of only 37 pictures, each 2 minutes long.
| Telescope | Newton 150/600 mm |
| Aperture | 150 mm |
| Focal length | 630 mm |
| Mount | Avalon M-Zero |
| Autoguiding | ZWO 174MM, Guidescope 30 mm |
| Camera | ZWO 071 Pro @-5°C |
| Corrector | Explore Scientific HR |
| Filters | Astronomik L-1 - UV IR Block Filter |
| Exposure | 37x120s, Gain 94, bin 1x1, |
| Date | 2019-09-03 |
Messier 78 is a reflection nebula located in constellation Orion, visually not far from stars Alnitak Alnilam and Mintaka, which form the Orion’s belt. This nebula is one of the brightest reflection nebulas on the sky, due to reflection of the light coming from two bright stars called HD38563A and HD38563B.
My previous attempt to capture this nebula during my expedition to Schwarzwald was not that successful, due to the due problems, therefore I dedicated nearly 3 hours to this DSO. However, it looks like the picture would need longer integration time.
| Telescope | Newton 254/1000 mm |
| Aperture | 254 mm |
| Focal length | 950 mm |
| Mount | Gemini G53f |
| Autoguiding | ZWO 174MM, TS 60/240 mm |
| Camera | ZWO 071 Pro @-20°C |
| Corrector | TS-Optics 2" 3-element MaxField |
| Filters | Hutech IDAS LPS-D2 |
| Exposure | 50x180s, Gain 94, bin 1x1, |
| Date | 2018-12-13 |
Is a reflection nebula located in constellation Cassiopeia, approximately 600 light years from Solar System. This nebula is very dim, therefore I used narrow band filters Ha, OIII and SII and composed two pictures. One is composed in real colors, second in fake (Hubble) color palette.
Reflection nebulae are interstellar clouds of gas and dust, which reflect the light coming from nearby stars. Compared to emission nebulae, reflection nebulae are excited by significantly lower energy, therefore the gas is not ionized and therefore these nebulae only reflect the light, but not emit.
Iris nebula is one of the most difficult deep space object to capture. Not the nebula itself, but the dark clouds around it. In order to capture these clouds you have to be under very good skies – with minimal light pollution. The reason is simple – the clouds are dark, but the background as well, therefore if you want to visualize the contrast between something which is dark and something which is even darker, good skies are essential. Since I live in sub-urban area, I had to wait till 1 o’clock at night. At this time nearly all street lamps are switched off and the light pollution drops to acceptable level.
Anyway back to the nebula – it’s reflective nebula (similar to Pleiades) located in constellation Cepheus. It’s 1300 light years far from the Solar system and it has 6 light years in diameter.
