SUPERCEDED - NEWER VERSION AVAILABLE - NGC 6888 - The Crescent Nebula in Cygnus
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NGC 6888 is an emission nebula that features a bright central star. This star is classified as a "Wolf-Rayet" star and is a star that is nearing its end. The central star creates a strong steller wind as it sheds off its outer layers. This probably is the cause of the structure of the nebula. Eventually, the central star will end its life in a spectactular supernova explosion.
In this image, North is Up. This image is cropped to 68% of the original.
Exposure Details |
Lens |
Celestron C-8 SCT with Celestron focal reducer |
Focal Length |
1260mm |
Focal Ratio |
f/6.3 |
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Mount |
Schaefer GEM - 7 1/2 |
Guiding |
80mm f/11 guidescope with PHD Guiding |
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Camera |
Canon 20Da |
Exposure |
135 subexposures of 180 seconds each at ISO 1600 - 6 3/4 hours total |
Calibration |
30 darks, 30 flats, 30 bias |
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Date |
August 29 and 30, 2011 |
Temperature |
65F on 8/29, 62F on 8/30 |
SQM Reading |
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Seeing |
4 of 5 on both nights |
Location |
Pine Mountain Club, California |
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Software Used |
Images Plus 4.0 for camera control, calibration, stacking and digital development. Photoshop CS5 used for flat fielding, curves, color correction, saturation adjustments, star shrinking, noise reduction, and high pass filter. HLVG for additional color correction, Carboni Actions for noise reduction and additional saturation adjustments. |
Notes |
This is a beautiful nebula, particularly when you capture the outer wispy elements. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to pull out these outer edges in this image. Its still a pretty good picture, but I'll probably want to re-image this object sometime. |
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