Heart and Soul nebulae

The astronomical nights is soon coming to an end. Last night we only had 2 hours of astronomical darkness so despite the Northern Lights (Photo of that is coming later) my main focus was to do some deep sky photography. My plan was to take photos of the Heart and Soul nebula since I haven't done them for quite some time and not with the Nikon D810A. All in all I'm quite happy with the result.

Photo was taken with a Nikon D810A, Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8E @ 135mm f/4. Exposure 45 x 60 seconds for a total exposure of 45 minutes at ISO 1600. Stacking and calibration (Darks, flats and bias frames) was done in PixInsight, final processing in Photoshop.

Cygnus Loop

This is the Cygnus Loop, an emission nebula measuring nearly 3° across (Six times the size of a full moon in the sky). This nebula is a large remnant after a supernova, a massive stellar explosion that occurred between 5,000 to 8,000 years ago. The distance from Earth is estimated to 1500 light years.

Photo was taken using a Nikon D810A with a Nikon 180mm f/2.8 Ai-s lens at f/4.0. Total exposure time is 1 hour (60 x 1 min) at ISO 1600. AstroTrac used for unguided tracking.

The Cygnus Loop

Behind the scenes with location of Cygnus Loop marked.
The green down to the right is some Northern light.

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Nebula made of water and fire

We had some really bad weather here in Sweden lately and the restlessness kicked in yesterday so I thought I would try something new to create some space photos and this is what came out of it.

I started of by doing some smoke photography and then took it one step further and added water. I used a plant mister to get small water drops act like stars along with the smoke. The idea was to create something that look like nebula's. So these fake nebula's where made from two of our four elements on Earth, water and fire.

The shot is one single exposure and I used used three off camera flashes to light up the smoke and the water.