Here’s my latest astrophotography work, the beautiful reflection nebula NGC 6914, in Cygnus.
Dipped in a sea of red, this blue haven is thusly described by the folks at APOD:
The complex of nebulae lies some 6,000 light-years away, toward the high-flying northern constellation Cygnus and the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy. With foreground dust clouds in silhouette, both reddish hydrogen emission nebulae and dusty blue reflection nebulae fill the 1/2 degree wide field. [..] Ultraviolet radiation from the massive, hot, young stars of the extensive Cygnus OB2 association ionize the region’s atomic hydrogen gas, producing the characteristic red glow as protons and electrons recombine. Embedded Cygnus OB2 stars also provide the blue starlight strongly reflected by the dusty clouds.
My rendition took a lot of integration time, possibly more than it was, necessary, but the result is very nice and noise free.
I ended up totalling a whopping 67 hours, 41 of which in Hα. The Hα subs were all collected when the Moon was up though, but they didn’t seem to suffer terribly from it.
The equipment used was the usual: GSO RC8 with APCCDT67, Moravian Instruments G2-1600FW, Astronomik LRGB and Hα 6nm filters, and a 10Micron GM2000 mount.
The image can be seen on AstroBin as well.