Object:
In the swan’s constellation near the pelican’s nebula lies the gas cloud of the butterfly next to a star known as the hen. Given the proper name Sadr, that star is in the center with the Butterfly to the left. The intricate patterns in the bright gas and dark dust are caused by complex interactions between interstellar winds, radiation pressures, magnetic fields, and gravity. This featured telescopic view captures IC 1318’s characteristic emission from ionized sulfur, hydrogen, and oxygen atoms mapped to the red, green, and blue hues of the famous Hubble Palette. The portion of the Butterfly Nebula pictured spans about 100 light-years and lies about 4000 light-years away.
Taken: July 13, 2021
Telescope: Skywatcher Esprit 80 ED Triplet APO Refractor
Mount: Paramount ME II
Camera: ZWO ASI2600MM-Pro (cooled to 0C; Gain 100) Bin 1×1.
Guiding: ZWO ASI290MM-Mini with ZWO M68 Off-Axis Guider (OAG)
Focuser: Starizona Micro Touch Autofocuser
Rotator: Optec Pixys LE camera field rotator
Filters used: Chroma Ha, OIII and SII 3nm narrowband filters with a ZWO 7-position Electronic Filter Wheel (EFW)
Exposures: 12×600 Ha; 11×600 sec. OIII; 12×600 sec SII for a total exposure time of 5.8 hours; calibrated with 40 dark frames, 40 flat frames with 40 flat-dark frames
Palette: Hubble SHO
Seeing Conditions:
Image capture and telescope control: Sequence Generator Pro and TheSkyX Pro with a SkyShed POD MAX dome observatory.
Processed with PixInsight and Photoshop CC 2021 (Weighted Batch Pre-processing script used for calibration, evaluation, registration and integration of subframes)
Comments: I broke new ground since this is the first time taking 600 second subframes (300 second subframes were previously the longest exposures taken). It is also the first time using the Chroma 3nm narrowband filters with the Skywatcher Esprit 80 Triplet refractor.
2022-12-20: This image was reprocessed using several new techniques in PixInsight since this image was originally processed in 2021.