Stacks Image 4832

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VDB 24

About this object

VdB 24 is beautiful reflection nebula in the constellation Perseus, an area of sky chock full of faint dust clouds. The nebula is lit up by the star XY Persei, the bright star on the edge of the bright blue reflection nebula. XY Persei is a young binary Herbig Ae star roughly 2.5 million years old and may be still enshrouded in dust. More info on this star and the nebula can be found here courtesy of Annes Astronomy news: http://annesastronomynews.com/annes-picture-of-the-day-reflection-nebula-vdb-24/. The image above is a cropped version of a larger image and was taken with a Stellarvue SVX 152T 6" refractor and QSI 683 WSG-8 CCD camera. The image is made up of 22.5hrs of data. This image was extremely difficult to process as the entire area is full of faint dust, and being imaged from a bright suburban Bortle 5 sky, the individual images were very noisy. The faint dust surrounding the nebula isn't too hard to see but I had to make the dust rather dim to cut down on the noise.
Image Details

  • Optics : Stellarvue SVX 152 refractor @f8 1200mm FL
  • Mount: Paramount MYT
  • Camera: QSI 683
  • Filters: Astrodon
  • Exposure (min): LRGB: 480:300:300:270. L Bin 1x1, RGB bin 2x2. Total of 22.5hrs
  • Camera/Mount Control: The Sky X, CCD Auto Pilot 5
  • Guiding: Starlight Xpress Lodestar X2
  • Processing: PixInsight 1.8,
  • Location: Stark Bayou Observatory, Ocean Springs, MS
  • Sky: Typical SQM 19.6-20.0, Bortle 5, Suburban
  • Date: Nov 2019
Stacks Image 74
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Stacks Image 75