Cone Nebula NGC2264 - Adam Lundie - Eatons Hill Observatory

Cone Nebula NGC2264

13-Jan-2016
Cone Nebula NGC2264 thumbnail
Cone Nebula NGC2264
The cone's shape comes from a dark absorption nebula consisting of cold molecular hydrogen and dust in front of a faint emission nebula containing hydrogen ionized by the brightest star of NGC 2264. The faint nebula is approximately seven light-years long and is 2,700 light-years away from Earth.

Image:

  • 24x 300s luminance bin2x2 + 20x flat + 50x dark + 120x bias
  • 20x 600s Hα bin2x2 + 10x flat + 50x dark + 120x bias
  • 10x 200s red bin3x3 + 30x flat + 50x dark + 120x bias
  • 8x 200s green bin3x3 + 30x flat + 50x dark + 120x bias
  • 10x 200s blue bin3x3 + 30x flat + 50x dark + 120x bias

Total exposure time: 6 hours 53 minutes.

Hardware:

  • Celestron EdgeHD 1100 with CGEM DX mount
  • Celestron 0.7x EdgeHD focal reducer
  • QSI 683-wsg Camera @ -15°C
  • Astronomik Type 2c LRGB filters
  • Astronomik Hα 6nm filter
  • Orion StarShoot Autoguider
  • Starlight Xpress Adaptive Optics

Location:

  • Orange zone in Brisbane, Australia. (Bortle 7)
  • Imaging over 7 nights - average to above average seeing + new moon.

Software:

  • Captured with AstroArt 6
  • Guiding with PHD2 + PHD_Dither
  • Aladin 8.0: Planning & camera alignment.
  • CCDInspector: Image analysis & rejection
  • CCDStack 2+: Calibrate, align, normalize, stack, curves, deconvolve luminance, combine RGB.
  • Photoshop CC: Reduce noise, integrate L+Ha+RGB, high pass filter, unsharp mask, shrink stars, color balance.

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