Date Posted: 8/30/2024
Date Taken (2023): Four nights, from 4/19 to 4/25
Date Taken (2024): Four nights, from 3/11 thru 5/2
Scope: Planewave CDK 12.5 f/8, 2541mm
Camera: SBIG STL-11000 with Astrodon Tru-Balance E-Series Gen2 filters
Temp: - -15C
Mount: Losmandy Titan
Guiding: On-axis via ONAG-XM and SX UltraStar at 2541mm. FocusLock real-time focus for focusing.
Exposure: LRGB, 690:180:205:190, over 21 hours in total. Luminance 15min unbinned; RGB 5min binned 2x2.

Calibrated and Stacked with CCDStack2 and MaximDL. Processed with CS4.

Lynd's Dark Nebula # 43 (LDN 43), known as the Cosmic Bat Nebula consists of a dense dark nebula obscuring a larger bright nebula behind it. It is located about 1400 light years away in Ophiuchus.

This target really calls out to be photographed by a lower noise CCMOS camera, IMHO. It is very faint; the nebula is virtually invisible in the 11.5 hour, DDP-stretched luminance frame. Much of it is barely above the noise levels on my older STL11000 camera. I had to do a ridiculous amount of stretching to reveal this much, which also resulted in a lot of noise. This image combines the subs taken in 2023 and 2024; the 2023 subs were framed very differently, and that resulted in even more noise along the top and bottom edges of this image where the frames were misaligned. This is about the best I could do with my equipment.