Ballard Loc: Grass Valley, California

The other night I took a few images of NGC 6572 (sometimes called the blue dot or the Emerald Nebula). This is a small planetary nebula (~20 arcseconds across) that can be found in the constellation of Ophiuchus and shines at magnitude 8.1. Although photographically it is not much to look at, it is one of the few nebula's that is bright enough to trigger the color cones in the human eye allowing you to actually see some color when view through an 8 inch or larger telescope (The larger the scope the more intense the color will appear).
The first image is an LRGB version of the nebula. In the second image I have added in some Ha data to the red channel, I was looking to see if it had an extended halo visible in Ha like the ring nebula, but there wasn't much there. Imaging this nebula was a bit tricky since it was so bright a long exposure would saturate the pixel elements in all colors leading to white image with no color in the nebula. So I ended up taking a lot of shot exposures to avoid issue.

All questions comments and suggestions are welcome.

For those interested here is the exposure and equipment information.
All subframes were taken though a Meade LX200 ACF 16 inch Schmidt Cassegrain telescope with a focal length of 4064mm. The camera used was an ASI 6200MM pro set to a gain of 100 with binning set to 1x1 and a temperature set to -20C.

Luminance 110 exposures at 20 seconds each
Red 58 exposures at 30 seconds each
Green 57 exposures at 30 seconds each
Blue 58 exposures at 30 seconds each

Ha 14 exposures at 4 minutes each

All appropriate Bias, dark and flat frames were used in the image processing.

LRGB image of NGC 6572

(Download)

LRGB Plue Ha added to the red channel image of NGC 6572

(Download)

Sidwalkastronomy Loc: New Jersey Shore

A 16 inch is a beast of a scope. I hope you have a permanent mount. I have the Meade 10 inch and that's about all I want to move. In my ROR I have a Celestron 11 inch

Ballard Loc: Grass Valley, California

Hi Sidwalkastronomy

Yep the 16 inch is a heavy mother (around 70lbs for the just the telescope). I do have a somewhat permanent mount on the back patio. It consists of homemade concrete triangle with adjustable feet for leveling, a heavy duty 1 inch thick steel pipe bolted to the concrete and some thick aluminum plating that I machined to hold the astrophysics 1600 GTO mount. For the backyard mount see:
https://www.uglyhedgehog.com/t-676946-1.html

Since my wife wasn't enthralled with helping hold up the telescope to mount it, I built a special cart to move the scope into position that allows me to mount and unmount it by myself. For the cart see:
https://www.uglyhedgehog.com/t-645063-1.html

I recently modified the aluminum plate that holds the telescope mount to add a piece that sits inside a portable pier so that I can haul the scope to more remote sites with my toy hauler. (See photo below).
In the portable case I did run into an issue with the casters on the telescope cart not working well in gravel, so I plan to change of out the casters for pneumatic wheels.

16 inch scope in portable configuration.

(Download)

Ballard Loc: Grass Valley, California

I just noticed I fumble finger the description on the Ha photo. It said
"LRGB Plue Ha added to the red channel image of NGC 6572"
should be:

"LRGB Plus Ha added to the red channel image of NGC 6572"

SonnyE Loc: Communist California, USA

Well, fumble fingered or not, it's a great image, Ballard.
I brought it up in Stellarium and they have the name as "Blue Racquetball Nebula" currently (with Emerald, Turquoise Orb, Emerald Eye Planitary, and Planet Krypton Nebula's thrown in).
In the last 10 years that I've been torturing myself in this hobby, I've been aggravated multiple times with someone renaming known objects with somebodies goobered up idea. Casper the friendly ghost nebula is one pet peeve of mine.

I was revisiting your links above. LOL ! I noticed I have some crow to eat.
https://www.uglyhedgehog.com/t-676946-1.html#11811555

Here I am, take a big BBQ cover off my mount and telescope. Set down a laptop and plug in one USB3 cable, and I'm ready to begin a night of imaging.
I'm amazed at what a few pricy changes can make. Cameras that NINA can recognize. Real electronic focusers. A guide camera upgrade. And several months of head scratching getting things to work in NINA.
And I'm a remotest snob setting in the house, or worse, sleeping through the night to wake up to a completed session of images stored in USB thumb drives.
Get my cup of coffee and see what I got. Talk about lazy!
I have one thing original from my initial start about 10 years ago, my Orion 50mm guide scope. still working, still reliably giving the updated guide camera a great view for PHD2 to work with.

Anyway, nice image, Ballard. I'm wondering if it isn't time we employ some engine lifts for our gear?

Ballard Loc: Grass Valley, California

Hi Sonny
Great comment. I also set up the laptop connected to the mount, focuser, camera, filter wheel and guide camera. Then I remote from the laptop interface to my desktop in the comfort of my office and set the imaging sequence going. Once it looks like it's working I go to bed and collect the results in the morning.

Now that the Big scope is "portable" I'm working on a battery box that will run all my equipment for a few of nights before it needs recharging. I plan to use it when I haul the big scope up to a star party in August just above Johnsonville in Plumas county for a few nights where I can dry camp with the RV.
I also found an RV campground in northern California that has pads setup for telescopes with power at the pads and claims very dark skies. I have reservations in September to try it out.
See
https://likelyplace.com

SonnyE Loc: Communist California, USA

That sounds good, and looks great.
Pads and power should be a great experiance.
Ok, well I'm heading to bed while the telescope continues it's night shift.

LoisCroft Loc: Jonesborough, Tennessee

Wow. That is amazing. I have a 10” mead and find it a challenge to move. I have it in my garage but need to bring it down a very steep driveway to get past the trees. Always afraid it’s going to end up in pieces in my neighbor’s cow pasture.
I have been looking into a solution and this has a lot of potential. Thanks for the post.

Ballard Loc: Grass Valley, California

Hi LoisCroft
Thanks for checking out the Emerald Nebula photo and for the comment. If you have more questions on the telescope cart feel free to ask. I just changed the casters on the bottom of the card to use pneumatic wheels, this raises it up a bit farther but since the telescope mount allows you to move the scope in multiple directions I just adjust were I set the cart to hold the telescope without any issues (note: If it were too short this would be an issue as I can only raise it so with the current mechanism.) Two of the wheels are fixed direction and two can rotated and also have brakes. See image below.