Deep Sky – DROGENBERG

This is a classic LBN object, ‘Lynds’ Bright Nebula”. The Lynds’ Catalog of Bright Nebulae.

I call it the ‘Salamander’ 🙂 you can see a Salamander-like creature unwrapping itself from the dust clouds. A clear Salamander head, and the fore- and back paws stick out

What is bright about it? it’s disputable. ‘Bright’ should be read as opposed to Dark Nebula (LDN). But these interstellar dust and molecular cloud type of nebula are pretty dark. They reflect the light from stars.

This image was obtained in Meldert (Drogenberg) on November 28th & in Grandpré November 29 (mono) and in Grandpré on February 1 and 2 (color).

Equipment: Esprit 120 @ F/7 ZWO ASI2600MC About 10 hours on a GM1000 mount no guiding.

LBN628 Esprit120 F7 and ASI2600MC Integration 6hrs AstroPixelprocessor and Photoshop.

Another version with APP and Photoshop

Link to Astrobin

Weather predictions did foresee some larger clearings in the sky, unfortunately with high clouds persistent, variable cirrus continuously present.

The seeing was very variable, around 22UT some better fragments came along just in time for Mars. After 22.30UT the sky was closed for business with new clouds arriving.

This image was the best out of a long series. It’s created from a 5-minute run at about 707 FPS, stacked 3% of the frames (212151 frames). Camera: Neptune 664C gain 385 and exposure 1.1529 ms.

A capture area was used in SharpCap of 200×196 pixels at F11 (native focal length C14).

Image finalized with Registax for sharpening, Photoshop for esthetics.

There are – despite the bad seeing – several albedo features visible as indicated above.

One of the more intriguing is the Elysium area. The large circular base of the volcano is visible, and as it appears the centre point also (caldera? ). What’s intriguing is the white patch NE of the volcano. is it snow? or clouds? and why only on that side? Iit is the side closest to the North Pole.

Propontis is much darker in albedo, compared to maps of prior oppositions.

There are some light clouds in the South polar region, and also above western Utopia.

Mars Rotation under variable Seeing with high cirrus clouds

Category: Deep Sky

LBN628 near Polaris

Mars despite bad seeing