Cepheus - Fireworks Galaxy to Elephant Trunk Nebula

            It'd been awhile since I'd been astrophotographing - felt great to be out under the stars and a smokeless sky. Fall is a excellent time for widefield astrophotography in the western US - there's a decent amount of astronomic dark, plenty of clear nights, temperatures aren't too cold, and quite a few interesting widefield subjects are available.

My goal with this small mosaic (only 2 panels) was to capture both the Fireworks Galaxy (NGC 6946, tiny here, bottom left) and the Elephant Trunk Nebula (IC 1396) in the same extent, with all of the interesting nebulosity in between, most notably the dark nebula Barnard 150 (AKA the Seahorse Nebula) in the lower left, one of my favs.

Surprisingly, I didn't detect much of the red emission Flying Bat Nebula (Sh2-129, center), part of which actually appears bluish (?, at first I was excited that I might have detected the Giant Squid Nebula (OU4), but nope, the blue is not in the right place). Previously I had captured Sh2-129, albeit faintly, with this same set up in the same location.

Part of the reason for this is that I stopped my Samyang 135mm down a half stop to f 2.4 (which I usually shoot wide open at f 2), not to tighten up stars, but to flatten out the heavy vignetting a tad. It did make a difference, but I did also notice that the Elephant Trunk Nebula didn't show up as strongly as expected based on my previous imaging of it. I'm still undecided whether I'll stay with f2 or move to f2.4, might depend on the subject.

There is a decent amount of what appears to be blue reflection nebulosity around star HD 198793 in the upper left quadrant; looking at widefield images of others, I can also see this faintly, but I haven't been able to find any closer images of it yet and it isn't cataloged in my astronomy app (SkySafari 6 Plus). It's possibly a processing artifact although it doesn't appear to be one.

Acquisition details: Fujifilm X-T10; Samyang 135mm f/2.0 ED UMC @ f2.4, ISO 1600; tracking with iOptron SkyTracker Pro; two panel mosaic - 42 x 60 sec and 44 x 60 sec; stacking with DeepSkyStacker; editing and mosaicking with Astro Pixel Processor; and curves adjustment/star reduction/editing with GIMP; taken on Aug. 31, 2021 under Bortle 3/4 skies.

Taken on: September 2, 2021

Tags:

Cepheus

wide

astrophoto

astrophotography

135mm

135

mosaic

night

sky

Elephant Trunk

Elephant Trunk Nebula

IC 1396

emission

emission nebula

fireworks

galaxy

Fireworks Galaxy

NGC 6946

Barnard 150

seahorse

Seahorse nebula

Milky Way

milky

way

Garnet Star

garnet

star

dust

dusty

Fuji

Fujifilm

X-T10

Samyang

Samyang 135mm

iOptron

SkyTracker

pro

DeepSkyStacker

Astro Pixel Processor

GIMP

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