New project, Sharpless object 132, Sh2-132Astro Aanarchy

New project, Sharpless object 132, Sh2-132

Sh2-132, an emission nebula in Cepheus

Ra 22^h 19^m 20^s Dec +56° 06′ 00"

Bi-color composition from the emission of ionized elements, R=100% Hydrogen, G=100%Oxygen and B=85%Oxygen+15%Hydrogen to compensate otherwise missing H-beta emission. This composition is very close to a visual spectrum.

This is a start of the new project. I will shoot more O-III and a S-II channel later.

Sharpless 132 is a very faint emission nebula, it locates at the border of Cepheus and Lacerta. Distance is about 10.000 light years. This image covers about 210' x 160', that's about 3,5 x 2,7 degrees. Resolution is 3,79 arc seconds/pixel.

With this image, I had my QHY9 and the Tokina AT-X 300mm f2.8 lens perfectly perpendicular to each others. Due that, the image is very sharp, there is no sharpening or star reduction methods used.

At f2.8, everything hast to be perfect, collimation, focus and orthogonality. The critical focus zone is only about 14 microns at this optical speed. If it's missed at all, the sharpness of the image collapse. At perfect focus, light ends up in a pixel, if focus is missed, even lightly, light will fall to all nine pixels, not just one!

The temperature compensating focuser, TCF-s, works as a heart of my DIY lens focusing system. It keeps focus perfect at all night when ambient temp. drops, typically 15 or more degrees up here. (Half a degree drop is enough to destroy the focus.) You can see my focusing device here:

http://astroanarchy.blogspot.com/2008/09/new-equipmets-and-some-development-work.html

A closeup