Butterfly Nebula - Gamma Cygni wide-field pictures here
This page features prime focus telescope images of the Butterfly Nebula in the Gamma Cygni (Sadr) area, also known as IC1318. Click the icon below for wide-field shots of this densely populated area of the sky. (Its easier to see the "butterfly" in the wide shots.)
Butterfly Nebula - Gamma Cygni wide-field pictures here
Cygnus the Swan is high overhead early fall in the northern hemisphere. Cygnus looks like a big cross, and Sadr is the star in the middle of the constellation. Sadr (magnitude 2.2, "Gamma Cygni") is shown in the mid-upper part of these images. The narrowband images here are from the Starry Nights B&B and represent 8.5 hours total exposure. A lot of people seem to prefer the "blue" version (above) to the Hubble Palette version (below), which do you like?
Image Information: The color images are constructed from multiple images over three nights: 35*5 min (175 min) H-alpha, 41*5 min (205 min) OIII, and 26*5 min (130 min) SII in the Fall of 2013. That's a total of 510 minutes exposure or 8.5 hours. The images were captured and processed via my typical image processing methods described here. Equipment: SBIG ST-8300 CCD camera with the FW8-8300 filter wheel, Astrodon narrowband 36mm filters, the Takahashi FSQ-85 telescope with reducer, AP 900GTO mount.
The golden "Hubble Palette" version features the same 8.5 hours of exposure described above, but assigns colors as follows: Red = SII, G = Ha, B = O3. Equipment: SBIG ST-8300 CCD camera with the FW8-8300 filter wheel, Astrodon narrowband 36mm filters, the Takahashi FSQ-85 telescope with reducer, AP 900GTO mount. I used MaximDL to acquire and process flat and dark frames, Registar to align, Photoshop CS6 with a little HDR toning to process from there.
Astronomy Pictures: Dick Locke's Astrophoto Gateway page....
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