The Wizard Nebula in narrowband

[timc]

Not having posted any images for a while, I decided to finish off processing a narrowband image of the Wizard Nebula in Cepheus.  This object consists of an open star cluster (NGC 7380) and emission nebulosity surrounding it (Sh2-142) and lies about 8,500 light years from us in the Perseus Arm of the Milky Way. The cluster itself spans about 25 light years across. This nebula is best imaged in narrowband and I have used the Hubble Palette colours (i.e. red=SII green=Ha and blue = OIII) to produce the image.  I imaged this object using my TEC140 (5.5inch) refractor at f/7 on a Paramount MX mount with a QSI 690wsg CCD camera and Starlight Xpress Lodestar guide camera. I used an old data set which I collected over various sessions in 2016 and 2017 and the final image consists of 13 x 10 minute sub-exposures for each of Ha, SII and OIII, giving a total imaging time of 6 hours 30 minutes. Data capture was with Maxim DL, calibration and deconvolution in CCD Stack2 and image processing in Photoshop CS5 and Topaz Labs Denoise and Sharpen. Thanks for looking.

Tim C

 

[Graham Cluer (CAS)]

Very nice.  Well done

Graham Cluer

[trevsie7]

That's a superb image Tim.  The "wizard" shows up well.

[Kevin Phillips]

Hi beautiful image. I Love the colours. Grateful job.

Kevin

Sent from Outlook for Android

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From: croydo...@googlegroups.com <croydo...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of timc <tcos...@gmail.com>
Sent: Friday, October 3, 2025 6:09:35 PM
To: croydonastro <croydo...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [croydonastro - 8108] The Wizard Nebula in narrowband

 

Not having posted any images for a while, I decided to finish off processing a narrowband image of the Wizard Nebula in Cepheus.  This object consists of an open star cluster (NGC 7380) and emission nebulosity surrounding it (Sh2-142) and lies about 8,500 light years from us in the Perseus Arm of the Milky Way. The cluster itself spans about 25 light years across. This nebula is best imaged in narrowband and I have used the Hubble Palette colours (i.e. red=SII green=Ha and blue = OIII) to produce the image.  I imaged this object using my TEC140 (5.5inch) refractor at f/7 on a Paramount MX mount with a QSI 690wsg CCD camera and Starlight Xpress Lodestar guide camera. I used an old data set which I collected over various sessions in 2016 and 2017 and the final image consists of 13 x 10 minute sub-exposures for each of Ha, SII and OIII, giving a total imaging time of 6 hours 30 minutes. Data capture was with Maxim DL, calibration and deconvolution in CCD Stack2 and image processing in Photoshop CS5 and Topaz Labs Denoise and Sharpen. Thanks for looking.

Tim C

 

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[drja...@aol.com]

Well done Tim.  Very definitely worth waiting to see!  Any other gems in the archive?

James

Sent from my iPad

On 3 Oct 2025, at 18:09, timc <tcos...@gmail.com> wrote:



Not having posted any images for a while, I decided to finish off processing a narrowband image of the Wizard Nebula in Cepheus.  This object consists of an open star cluster (NGC 7380) and emission nebulosity surrounding it (Sh2-142) and lies about 8,500 light years from us in the Perseus Arm of the Milky Way. The cluster itself spans about 25 light years across. This nebula is best imaged in narrowband and I have used the Hubble Palette colours (i.e. red=SII green=Ha and blue = OIII) to produce the image.  I imaged this object using my TEC140 (5.5inch) refractor at f/7 on a Paramount MX mount with a QSI 690wsg CCD camera and Starlight Xpress Lodestar guide camera. I used an old data set which I collected over various sessions in 2016 and 2017 and the final image consists of 13 x 10 minute sub-exposures for each of Ha, SII and OIII, giving a total imaging time of 6 hours 30 minutes. Data capture was with Maxim DL, calibration and deconvolution in CCD Stack2 and image processing in Photoshop CS5 and Topaz Labs Denoise and Sharpen. Thanks for looking.

Tim C

 

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<NGC7380 WizNeb TEC140 QSI690 NB Final October 2025.jpg>

[tcos...@gmail.com]

Thanks for your kind comments gents – much appreciated.

To answer your question James – yes plenty more where that came from!

Bes wishes

Tim C

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/croydonastro/9491EF3A-E899-4A58-8250-6982C9C0EFBE%40aol.com.

[William Bottaci]

Hello Tim, that is a satisfying image to see; a lot of detail and colour, well defined edges and nice tight stars - you've done well.

Just to (partially) explain some terminology to those new to this forum and/or subject:

 - Narrowband filters: The colour spectrum we see, from red to violet, can be divided into about 400 nanometres and therefore the colours of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet span several tens of these units each. If we simply want to see any one colour then a filter bandwidth of say 50 to 60 nanometres would do. But, nebulae tend to emit just a tiny fraction of any one colour, easily less than even a tenth of a unit, and there are advantages to isolating it as much as possible; for one it prevents nearby colours 'washing' it out. To an extreme, the red hydrogen alpha of the Sun can be isolated by less than a tenth of a nanometre which means it filters out the blue daylight sky. You may think that this would need a much longer exposure time but it makes no difference as you're letting through the whole light of the nebulae. The more narrowband the filter the more difficult and hence expensive but if looked after they'll last a lifetime.

 - Emission nebulosity: Nebulae that emit (their own) light shine in just that tiny slice of the spectrum. Nebulae that shine by reflecting starlight have a much broader range, so it's important to take this into account else it would pointlessly dim their light. The Pleiades cluster is an example but planetary nebulae are narrowband. To capture stars, which emit across the whole spectrum, an additional exposure is preferred, preferably with no filter, else they probably wouldn't look white. However, they are plenty bright - Tim, your opinion and practice is welcome...

 - Our Milky Way being a spiral galaxy has arms, which naturally have been given names. We live in the Sagittarius arm, or more correctly an off-shoot or spur of it called the Orion Spur, so somewhere between this Sagittarius arm (looking inwards) and the Perseus arm (looking outwards). At least that was the opinion but recent observations show the 'Orion' is an arm in its own right. Please don’t expect anything definite here; arms are mostly amorphous, vary in size, shape, and position, and we can't easily see them beings we're on the inside. Anyway, Tim was looking outwards, opposite the centre direction indicated by the constellation Sagittarius. Arms being denser regions have more of the galactic deep-sky objects. We can easily see one such naked-eye object in the Perseus Arm, the Double cluster; not bad at 7,500 light years.

 - The Hubble Palette colours I've mentioned before, here's a simple brief explanation, just the first two paragraphs and table:

https://delsaert.com/deep-sky/nebulae/h-alpha/

Thank you Tim for sharing.

William

On Sat, 4 Oct 2025 at 09:24, <tcos...@gmail.com> wrote:

Thanks for your kind comments gents - much appreciated.

To answer your question James - yes plenty more where that came from!

Bes wishes

Tim C

On Sat, 4 Oct 2025 at 07:00, 'drja...@aol.com' via croydonastro <croydo...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

Well done Tim.  Very definitely worth waiting to see!  Any other gems in the archive?

James

3 Oct 2025, 18:43:39 Trev S<trevs...@gmail.com>

That's a superb image Tim. The "wizard" shows up well.

3 Oct 2025, 18:22:48 Graham Cluer<graham...@gmail.com>

Very nice.  Well done

Graham Cluer