NGC7129 / 7133 / 7142 Reflection nebula and open cluster in Cepheus
Uploaded 12/3/22
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This obscure and but
interesting field contains quite an assemblage of structures.
First, the bright Milky Way background forms a colorful backdrop
to the nebula and clusters of stars. The rich tapestry of blues
and golden stars carpet this 1.5 degree wide view. The bluish
reflection nebula, NGC7133 is quite faint, and is difficult to
image properly without long exposures. Contained within the blue
is a central star cluster NGC7129 with some hints of pink emission
around its edges. This feature did not show up clearly until
many hours of exposures! The dark nebula to the upper left of
the blue portion is LBN497. Surrounding the nebula is the barely
illuminated dust cloud - Yellowish in color - that is part of
the same nebular complex. It is lit only by light from the Milky
Way galaxy itself, and is ultra faint and difficult to get a
clear image of. Finally, the splashy open cluster NGC7142 at
the bottom which is about 9th magnitude and contains about 100
stars compliments the scene. It too has blue and golden stars
as seen here.
Nearly every nebula
in Cepheus is filled with this tawny dusty background. All is
extremely faint and requires long exposures such as this 9 hours
to record with any certainty.
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Instrument: 10" f/3.9 Orion Astrograph Newtonian with Baader MPCC
Mount: Astrophysics 1200 QMD
Camera: Color CMOS OSC
Guider: ASI mini w/80mm piggyback refractor
Exposure: 9 hours total integration time over 4 nights
Location: Payson, Arizona, Elevation: 5150 ft.
Sky: Seeing FWHM = 2 arcsec , Transparency 9/10
Outside Temperature: 45 F
Image Processing Tools:
Maxim DL6: Calibration, Color Conversion, aligning, stacking
PixInsight: Saturation Curves
Photoshop CS2: Curves, Color Correction, Gradient removal (Grad Xterminator), Cleanup
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