Saturday, August 13, 2022

Planetary Nebula NGC6781 - Ghost of the Moon Nebula

 


Planetary Nebula NGC6781 is located in constellation Aquila and about 1500ly away from Earth.
My first attempt to image this Planetary Nebula was on location @ Helios member Guido. But due to lot's of issues this attempt failed completely. The good news is that some of the issues were rootcaused resulting in new way of polar allignment using sharpcap. Yesterday (aug 12, 2022) I was able to use my adjusted set up with an "excellent polarallignment" and a guiding error of 0,75px. This second attempt was succesfull while having a full moon sky.
Stephen James O'Meara's (Herschel 400 Observing Guide p 249) calls this planetary nebula "Ghost of the Moon Nebula".

Setting: TAL200K f/8.5, ASI2600MC and my new guide scope 50x180 with ASI290MM
Exposure: lights 14x300s, darks, bias, flats and darkflats; binning 2x2
Software: SharpCap 4, ASIStudio, N.I.N.A., Astro Pixel Processor, CS4 and DeNoise AI