The Wizard Nebula
Here’s one that has presented a challenge to me.
The Wizard Nebula, cataloged as Sh 2-142, is an emission nebula located in the Cepheus constellation. It surrounds open star cluster NGC 7380. If you look at it just right and squint, you might see the outline of a robed wizard extending his arm and wearing a pointy hat.
The challenge? Last October I gathered over 7 hours of imaging data on this nebula, but the results were far from stellar (pun intended). Despite employing every image processing trick I know, I was unable to adequately separate the stars and nebulosity from the sensor noise. Below is a starless rendition from the first run. Note the “staticky” appearance and the horizontal lines.
I’m not certain what went wrong. The difference between the first and second attempts is that I used 60-second exposures the first time versus 120-seconds the second time. But I don’t think that accounts for the excessive noise. Higher ambient temperatures will cause more noise, but it was considerably warmer on the second run. So, heat apparently wasn’t the problem, either.
Maybe some of the firmware updates from Dwarflab improved the performance of the imaging chip. Or perhaps it was just the exposure time, after all. We did have a lot of smoke from prescribed burns last year, too, so maybe the air column was smokier than I realized. Regardless, I think the most recent attempt turned out OK.
Click on the link below to view the full-size version of this image:
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