The Running Chicken Nebula

Wow Mike. An amazing capture! I'd love to hear what equipment you used. Do you have a telescope? I can never get over images of what is in the sky above us. We see so little with the naked eye. Very nicely presented as well Mike.

Hi Gail

I purchased a telescope last Easter (the first one I've owned since I was boy).  It's a Newtonian Reflector with a 10" diameter mirror with a focal length of 1000mm.  It is fitted to a motorised and computer controlled equatorial telescope mount that ensures that the scope keeps pointing at the target as the earth rotates.  I don't look through it at all; I just mount a small light weight DSLR where one would normally place an eyepiece.  

Because these objects are so dark it is necessary to take long exposures as the mount rotates to track the target.  In this case I took a large number of 5 min exposures at ISO200.  I use software to align and integrate (stack) the separate images to produce a single photo.  The advantage of stacking is that the noise, which is randomly scattered across the image, is averaged out while the real signal is summed.  This greatly increases the signal to noise ratio and brings out the detail that would otherwise be overwhelmed by the noise in a single image.

I built myself an outdoor observatory so I can fix the telescope to a pier and leave it outside during long weekend sessions and then bring it in when I won't be using if for a while.  The link shows photos of the scope and observatory.

http://stargazerslounge.com/topic/234625-mikes-roll-away-shed-observatory/

Cheers

Mike

Hello Mike, A very beautiful capture and great presentation. I especially enjoyed reading your answer to Gail's question, very interesting and fascinating. Hope you have a couple more. Viewed larger is even better.

Best Always,  Holger

Amazingly done, Mike!

Thank you all for your very kind comments.

cheers

Mike