Wednesday, July 29, 2009

NGC 7008 or the "fetus" nebula

While waiting for Jupiter to get higher in the sky last night, I used that time to experiment with some imaging of a planetary nebula in Cygnus. There is a LOT of cool gassy stuff around that area to explore.
This one is 2,800 light years away, so this is one of the closer objects than some of my other targets. Still hard to image well though. I'm not totally happy with the focus on this since I think I had a little of the dreaded and familiar LX200 "mirror flop" when I went vertical. But then again, I am my own worst critic as usual. NGC 7008 is called the "Fetus Nebula". Maybe because it kind of looks like the Star Child from 2001:A Space Odyssey?
As always, click images for full size.

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