The Prawn Nebula (IC 4628)

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The Prawn Nebula (IC 4628)

[Public Domain] 18 Jul 2015 Dylan O'Donnell
CATEGORY : Astrophotography
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Taken over 2 nights, this is a deep space astrophoto of the “Prawn” nebula 6,000 lightyears away from earth. This kind of deep space work takes a long time usually and this one is about 2.5 hours of exposure time in 3 and 5 minutes exposures. In fact most of the data was quite blurry because of wind, so I processed it separately and used it as a “luminance” layer over the sharp data which creates the glowing halo around the stars. Only 33 minutes of exposures were “sharp”.

I don’t have my own observatory and it’s been extremely cold across Australia this last week, with record snowfalls across the eastern states. Thankfully I’ve spent the last few months refining my software and workflow to allow me to remote control the telescope and cameras. Once I’m setup in the backyard I use Stellarium and plate-solving software “Astro Tortilla” to find targets. Then I run off exposures in Nebulosity which I also use to stack the images.

Celestron 9.25″ Edge HD SCT / Hyperstar 3 / UHC Filter / EQ6 Mount / EQMOD / Stellarium / Astrotortilla / Nebulosity 4 / Photoshop

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