BBROASTRO
Polaris Integrated Flux Nebula
In this wide field photograph, we can see the bright blue shining star that is Polaris, often called the North Star.
This is a very familiar star to astrophotographers as every equatorial telescope mount in the northern hemisphere points towards this star. All the stars in the sky appear to rotate around Polaris, but in actual fact the rotation is very slightly to the side. That's where the North Celestial Point (NCP) currently is.
Surrounding Polaris is an abundance of Integrated Flux Nebula (IFN). This IFN is faint dust lit up by the light coming off our own Milky Way galaxy, the integrated flux of all the stars combined.
Dark skies and long exposure times are required to reveal this dust. I used a Canon 100mm 2.8 IS L macro lens to capture this photo. Its fast F2.8 focal ratio aids in capturing this faint region. I also used a high sensitivity IMX533 colour camera. A simple star tracker from Skywatcher was used which made this setup nice and portable and fun to use.
Over the course of 3 nights (4th - 6th February 2025) I captured 172 exposures of 180s long. This was stacked to produce a low noise image to help reveal the IFN.
Polaris Integrated Flux Nebula
In this wide field photograph, we can see the bright blue shining star that is Polaris, often called the North Star.
This is a very familiar star to astrophotographers as every equatorial telescope mount in the northern hemisphere points towards this star. All the stars in the sky appear to rotate around Polaris, but in actual fact the rotation is very slightly to the side. That's where the North Celestial Point (NCP) currently is.
Surrounding Polaris is an abundance of Integrated Flux Nebula (IFN). This IFN is faint dust lit up by the light coming off our own Milky Way galaxy, the integrated flux of all the stars combined.
Dark skies and long exposure times are required to reveal this dust. I used a Canon 100mm 2.8 IS L macro lens to capture this photo. Its fast F2.8 focal ratio aids in capturing this faint region. I also used a high sensitivity IMX533 colour camera. A simple star tracker from Skywatcher was used which made this setup nice and portable and fun to use.
Over the course of 3 nights (4th - 6th February 2025) I captured 172 exposures of 180s long. This was stacked to produce a low noise image to help reveal the IFN.