It was January; prime-time winter. The winter is one of the greatest times for astrophotography. The southern sky is full of amazing objects. I wanted to shoot the Orion Nebula, but found it difficult to access from my backyard; ditto with the Horsehead Nebula (although I eventually shot it).
As I researched potential subjects, I came across the Flaming Star & Tadpole Nebula. They struck me by how they were joined by this faint red nebulosity between them. After viewing a few photos with both objects, I went to Telescopious to see if I could frame this with my Redcat 51 and ASI533mm. It turned out to be a perfect fit for my equipment.
Both subjects live in the constellation Auriga. The Flaming Star nebula is 1,500 light years from Earth. The Tadpole Nebula is 12,000 light years away. This means that, in reality, the Tadpole Nebula is huge (maybe 8 times bigger) than the Flaming Star.
This was my first time shooting 2 objects in one picture. How do I get my mount to go to a double target? The ASIAir (the Raspberry Pi computer I use for astrophotography) had that covered with its software. The ASIAir app has a planetarium section that showed me where I was in the sky and how my target looked framed. In here, I could move my target around in the frame. So, in this case, I moved the Tadpole Nebula into the frame alongside the Flaming Star nebula. I synced, and the telescope moved to frame both subjects.
I love this photo and to date, it’s the longest integration I’ve done with 14 hours of exposure time. However, I still feel it needs more. The blue (Oxygen III signal) in the Tadpole Nebula is far too faint, as I only recorded 2.5 hrs of it. In retrospect, I wish I had recorded no Sulphur II (Sii) and used that time to record more Oxygen III (Oiii) instead.
Well, there is always next year! Below are details of the filters I used and my total integration time.
| Filter | Time |
|---|---|
| Antlia Ha 3nm | 6h 58m |
| Antlia Oiii 3nm | 2h 30m |
| Antlia Sii 3nm | 3h 20m |
| Antlia RGB | 1h 30m |
| Total | 14h 18m |