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The Blue Flash Nebula in Delphinus
Optics: CPC1100 at f6 on a Milburn Wedge
Camera: QHY8
Exposure: 12 x 5 minutes
Guiding: PHD Guiding, using a Meade DSI Pro II on a Taurus Tracker III off axis guider
Date: July 12, 2010
Processing: Stacked with Deep Sky Stacker with hot pixel removal, post-processed with Photoshop CS2 with maximum entropy deconvolution using a PS plugin from AstraImage. I did a little star shrinking with a minimum filter, radial blur and sharpening on some of the larger stars.
This is a 1.5x enlargement of the center of the field. In deeper exposures under darker skies, the nebula shows cone shaped extensions on either end. I would have had 4 hours of data, but the guide star was lost after one hour. I returned to this target a few nights later and captured four hours, but still could not see any sign of the extensions. My skies may be too light polluted to pull out that level of detail. The stars in that series were slightly egg-shaped due to some minor RA problems, so I chose to stay with this set instead.
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