B72 Snake Nebula in Ophiuchus

 

Early May when I was down in Flagstaff, I was able to collect about 45 minutes of data on the Snake Nebula.  I had a health emergency on the second night that prevented me from collecting a ton of data.  Got 91 light frames at 30 seconds, 60 darks, 60 bias, 50 flat frames.  Shot with the AP92 on the HEQ5 pro mount.   Seeing was pretty average which means below average but transparency on the first night was excellent.  Processed mostly in Pixinsight but final touchups and cropping with Photoshop.  Camera was Canon EOS R and ISO was 3200.  And I used the .8 reducer/flattener from AP.   The image is about an 80 percent crop of the total stacked image.  .

I have been thinking of this target for ages and am happy I finally got it. 

Not sure what the dark nebulosity to the "left" is but it looks like a fanciful coat hangar.

 

 

 

 

Seeing wasn't great especially down in the south.  But the stars seemed mostly circular with a slight upper left to lower right elongation.  Again, pretty typical for east Flagstaff.

Here's a close-up crop of the Snake with some Bok Globule friends.  The thousands upon thousands of stars...