IC2948 ‘The Running Chicken Nebula’

As with almost all my images I shot this one from my light polluted backyard in Sydney Australia. There was a 98% illuminated moon overhead so not ideal conditions for photographing deep space objects. It’s been about 3 months since I’ve done any astrophotography due to poor weather when I’ve had time to go out and shoot so this time it was good to be able to get out and capture some photons again.

This was taken with a modified Canon 550D, Orion ED80T Carbon Fiber imaging telescope, HEQ5 Pro mount, Orin Field Flattener, Orion 80mm guide scope & Orion Starshoot Autoguider.

2 hours of data captured on the 17th April 2014.

Exposures:

• 15 x 2 minutes
• 12 x 5 minutes
• 3 x 10 minutes

This time I also had slightly enough time to create a master dark from 6 x 2 minute darks. I also attempted for the first time using my MacBook Pro and a sheet of white paper to take some flat frames. While it was a little fiddly I managed to get some decent exposures that helped with pre-processing.

Data was captured with Nebulosity3, pre-processed with PixInsight & some minor adjustments in Aperture3.