OU4 The Squid Nebula

Having run out of fresh targets to shoot, I still didn’t want to miss out on these beautiful clear new moon nights. Even though it’s a bit early for the Squid Nebula, I decided to start this project last week from my backyard in the city. I knew this was going to be a tough subject — the kind that would challenge even my 200mm Newtonian, even reduced to F/3.41.

To make things more difficult, my 3nm filter doesn't exactly play nice with such fast optics.

 

And indeed, after four nights and over 20 hours of imaging, the Squid was barely peeking out from the faint background of the Bat Nebula. So I packed up the setup and moved to a much darker site to continue the project under better skies.

Unsurprisingly, the difference was immediately noticeable: the five hours I captured on the first night out there already outperformed the previous 20 by far.

Then, yesterday I collected another night of shots and this is the result of over 31 accumulated hours of integration.

Hope you like it!

 

Equipment:

Skywatcher Newton 200 F4 Quattro @692mm (F3.40)

Skywatcher 0.86x Coma Corrector

Optolong L-Ultimate dual band 3nm Filter

Omegon veTEC571C Color

Touptek OAG X + ASI290MM Mini Guide Camera

Ioptron CEM70 Mount

 

123x600s G100 T-15° (Bortle 6 Sky)

67x600s G100 T-15° (Bortle 4 Sky)

31h40m Total Integration Time

 

 

Done