Starship Asterisk*

hi friends of DSI,

weather was nasty for more the last 2 months of 2007.
but - everything ends and so does bad weather...

I started M76 in an almost perfect night! 1.11.07 - we had terrific seeing and transpareny. (8)-9/10 !
but that night moon came up high in the sky so I had to stop after 2 hours - it was just too bright.
then of course - I had to wait a little ... and on friday last week I was able to complete the session with 5.5 more hours of exp time.
single frames 10 minutes and 15 minutes.

scope: 9" f/9 TMB Apo
CCD: SXVF M25C one shot color
image acquisition, autoguiding preprocesing astroart4.
also CCD sharp and registax for preprocessing.
postprocessing (incuding pseudoluminance) in PS CS2 and Pix Insight LE.

FULL size:
http://www.stargazer-observatory.com/M76-full.html

make sure to check out his enlarged crop HERE:
http://www.stargazer-observatory.com/M76-ecrop.html

this little nebula holds only some 61 ar seconds in its longitudinal axis and therefore is a "hard nut" in terms of resolution and detail.

I am really very glad with that result, as the central appears to be a little elongated and one could get the idea, it has two parts...(only visible in the enlarged crop)well, I admit - this is personal bias here...
also the small stargroup was a specific target and I am happy, the 9" apo split this group.
certainly we know, the souther yellowish component of this "optical binary system" is located some thousands of lightyears beyond the nebula,...
looking forward for your comments and tips, guys!

I think I like this one the best of the three deep space images you posted. The vast emptiness of the space around the nebula really says something about the size of the universe.

It's hard to compete with the detail Hubble and the big research telescopes give, but the composition here gives something different than the detail of those.