The Cave & Monkey Head Nebulae Plus The Moon

The Cave Nebula – – 242 x 30 sec @ Gain 42, Offset 42, -20C, 26×240 sec @ Gain 20, Offset 31,-15C, QHY183c, L-eNhance filter, Televue TV-85 at F/5.6
Moon Composite – Dec 2, 2019
Monkey Head Nebula – 100 x 30 sec @ Gain 42, Offset 42, -20C, QHY183c, L-eNhance filter, Televue TV-85 at F/5.6

Sunday evening was beautiful here in Cajun Country and I did not let the night go to waste.   I shot a number of things, but I went back to the Cave Nebula early on to add more data to my existing image of it.

I shot the moon next, even though the seeing was not that great.   I shot 10 stills starting out slightly underexposed and progressing to over-exposed to show the dark part that was lit by Earthshine.    My experiment to blend them all together was not what I had in mind in terms of look and feel.  Plus, I had shot them in 8-bit mode instead of 16-bit mode in SharpCap 3.2.  It was a learning experience, I guess.   I’ll figure it out one day, hopefully.

I did the Monkey Head Nebula last and it hardly needed any post-processing.   50 minutes worth of data was enough to show most of it.   Guiding and composition were good and the image was easy to post process.   I packed it in after this, since it was nearly 2:00 am and I needed at least a few hours of sleep before work Monday morning.   lol

Like before, these images were all taken from a metro area with Bortle 8 red zone light pollution levels.   An Optolong L-eNhance filter was used to shoot through the muck.

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