FINALLY a Seagull that doesn’t steal your food at the beach and poop on your head! In the waning months of Spring I realized that I hadn’t imaged the Seagull Nebula (IC 2177) in basically the entirety of my Astrophotography journey.
Three nights of collecting photons that started moving toward us when we had finally figured out how to make bronze. Also about the same time that the volcano on Santorini violently erupted, burying Akrotiri in volcanic ash much as would happen to Pompeii approximately 1600 years later.
This was collected from my Bortle 9 backyard in the north Dallas suburb of Allen, surrounded by not less than 450 acres of fully illuminated parking lot within a two mile radius of my house. In the animated movie Madagascar one of the characters says “Oh look, the star is out tonight!” before he realizes it’s a helicopter That’s basically how our neighborhood is.
Yet I’m still able to make recognizable images from my backyard by integrating a LOT of time and picking out the very faint signal from the massive amount of noise (light pollution). Advances in software in recent years has absolutely been an enabling technology and it has completely changed my perception of what can be done from suburban areas.
Integration time: 125x300s (10 hrs 25 min) over six nights (Mar 13, 14, 19, 20, 21, 22 – 2026)
Camera: QHY268C
Filter: IDAS LPS-P2 Broadband LP filter
Telescope: Apertura 75Q
Mount: CEM60
Capture software: NINA
Processing software: PixInsight