NEBULA
VOLUME 44 I ssue 2
PAGE 13
OBSERVING REPORTS
IC1396 CEPHEUS
Imaged by Ray Emery
Imaged on 05/Oct/2016.
Telescope:
Televue Genesis
100mm aperture f5 apo refractor
(old Petzval design).
Camera: Canon 700D (modified)
with Astronomik clip-in CLS fil-
ter.
Mount: Skywatcher EQ6, perma-
nently mounted.
No autoguiding.
Exposures: 10 x 6 mins @ ISO
1600
Darks & Flats.
IC1396 in Cepheus
Stacking: Deep Sky Stacker.
Processing: Gimp.
Since there were so few images, I
didn’t worry about any feint satel-
lite trails for this one!
M57 The Ring Nebula
Imaged by Rod Levene
This image of M57 (2/Sep/2016)
is from my garden.
It was from just 6 exposures at
30 sec. The short time was because
of uncertain tracking/ align-
ment and even with this, I dis-
carded 3 frames. I used a 'Nebular'
filter and I suppose I should have
repeated it without, but didn't have
time. The processing is all about
detail versus background noise, so
you’ll find that the sky isn’t black.
I see it’s also robbed the stars of
their colours. I use my 8" Newto-
nian and a Sony camera which,
despite having ‘live view’, focuses
with difficulty. I also did a run of
10 sec exposur es which resulted in
more noise if the detail was to be
brought out. Neither try revealed
the central star but at mag. 14.5,
that’s not surprising.
M57 The Ring Nebula
The object is 2.5' of arc wide and
you can see that it’s not a perfect
circle. Astronomers now think that
it’s not spherical but we are look-
ing at a bit of an angle into the end
of a cylinder, shaped by its mag-
netic field.