Colorful Festive Array! - Wirtanen, Pleiades, & California Nebula (Kurt Zeppetello)

Colorful Festive Array! - Wirtanen, Pleiades, & California Nebula

Link: http://astroquest1.blogspot.com/

So I finally had a bit of clearing on a night where I was able to image stuff. One of the things I wanted to try was Comet 46P(Wirtanen) with Pleiades (M45) and the California Nebula (NGC 1499) in the same field of view. So I went to my nifty fifty (50mm) lens attached to my trusty Hap Griffin modified Canon T3i/600D. I wanted to get 45 minutes on this but had to settle for 30 minutes due to the usual clouds which appear in CT even on supposedly clear nights. The moon was high and bright but I wanted to try it anyway so I did a 30s test shot at ISO 1600 and saw Pleiades and the Comet with lots of noise and no California Nebula . I then did a 30s test shot with the Baader Moon and SkyGlow Neodymium Filter and it actually worked really well. The California Nebula was well defined but there was still lots of camera noise. I then lowered the ISO to 800 and increased the exposure to 60s and the noise was much less. Thanks to Shannon Calvert for recommending ISO 800 for better a backgrounds.

There is a large molecular cloud between Pleiades and the California Nebula which I would love to get but you need much more exposure and a dark moonless night to pick it up really well. You can see the darkened region in the middle of the image. Some of the noise I was picking up was the cloud but with a bright moon and limited exposure it was not optimal. Anyway, the objects do make for a festive holiday array!

Also, I was trying to stack this with PI but was getting the following error:

- Cannot execute instance in the global context.

- Reason: No master calibration frames or overscan regions have been specified.

I ended up stacking it in DSS and then transferring it in PI. I did not take any support frames and though I programmed so it would not to bother with flats and etc.

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
PixInsight job	DLQ7NGM2HKIQCI5AK7A9WDJGXNX01PIE
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

RA (center)	04h03m38s.3
RA (top/left)	03h25m52s.3
RA (top/right)	03h34m24s.7
RA (bottom/right)	04h34m03s.3
RA (bottom/left)	04h39m57s.2

Dec (center)	+30°24′55″
Dec (top/left)	+40°06′54″
Dec (top/right)	+20°03′52″
Dec (bottom/right)	+20°16′41″
Dec (bottom/left)	+40°18′38″

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