LDN 1235 - The Dark Shark Nebula

About 650 light-years away In the constellation Cephus, you will find The Shark Nebula (LDN 1235). The Shark Nebula is a part of a large molecular cloud in the constellation Cepheus. Within LDN 1235 there are two blue reflection nebulae, vdB149 and vdB150, that are illuminated by nearby spectral type B8IV stars.

July 6, 2024

Talk about a difficult target to image and process! I would greatly appreciate any tips from the pros on processing dark nebula. That said, the main challenge I likely face is that f/4.9 is probably just too slow to image such challenging targets with low integration time. I probably need 5x as much integration to get a better result. Nonetheless, this was still a worthwhile exercise to see what I could get from about 5 hours shooting into Bortle7/8 skies (Cephus is out over the largest source of light pollution for me.) I find Dark Nebulae very fascinating and am wildly impressed by all of the imagers out there who are able to capture it all in such great detail.

Technical Details

Imaging Telescope: William Optics RedCat 51 II

Imaging Camera: ZWO ASI533MC Pro

Mount: Sky-Watcher EQ6-R Pro

Filter: Antlia Tri-band RGB Ultra Filter - 2” Mounted

Accessories: ZWO ASIAIR Plus, ZWO EAF, ZWO Filter Drawer (Gen 2)

Software: Siril, Starnet, Photoshop, NoiseXterminator, APF-R

Guiding Telescope: William Optics UniGuide 32

Guiding Camera: ZWO ASI174MM

Imaging Dates: July 5, 2024

Frames (gain 101.0) f/4.9 -10c: 100x180” (5h)

Integration Time: 5h

Darks/Flats/Dark Flats: 30/25/30

Bortle Dark-Sky Scale: 7.00

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Caldwell4 - Iris Nebula

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M51 - Whirlpool Galaxy