NGC 7129 / 7142; Defying common astrophotography sense?

[timastrovirus]

This past week, I took on a project that any normal astrophotographer would probably think I am crazy; Shooting a patch of sky harboring a small reflection nebula surrounded by dark dust. The catch here is that I live under Bortle 5-6 skies and that we had a mostly full moon (56-100% illuminated over the course of these imaging sessions). To tackle this challenge, i opted to expose a very, very long total integration, with almost 32 hours over 7 nights, without any filtering, exept for the UV/IR cut filter present in the camera.

Image details:
31 hours and 48 minutes total exposure during the nights of 6 / 7 to 13 / 14 of August (exept for the night of 11 / 12), imaging start around 22:45 PM, imaging ending at around 3:15 AM, moon phase rising from 56% to 100% during the sessions.

636x180 subs, TEC 0°C, gain 565, offset 25, captured by CCDciel, preprocessing in DSS 4.2.6 using 50 darks, 50 flats and 50 bias frames. Post-processing in PixInsight using Dynamic Crop, Linear Fit, ABE. DBE, ATrousWavelets Noise Reduction, Deconvolution, Histogram Transformation, Masked Stretch, HDRMT, LHE, Saturation via Curves and LRGB combination (synthetic luminance based on OSC data)

Equipment:
Skywatcher BK200P @F5 Newton (20 cm) / MPCC mkII
NEQ6 / EQmod / CdC
QHY5 / 9x50 Finderguider / PHD2 (guiding averaging 0.30 arc sec)
Altair Astro Hypercam 269C PRO TEC
LPM (DIY SQM) between 19.30 (6/7-08-2022), falling to 17.30 (13/14-08-2022)

A very enjoyfull journey to undertake.

 

Edited August 14, 2022 by timastrovirus
Typo

[TerryMcK]

Excellent results

[Carastro]

That's quitre stunning and I am jealous beause it is one on my TO DO list but need darker skies than my Bortle 8 to do it. 

 

Well done, it has been a great time for clear skies.

 

Carole 

 

 

[timastrovirus]

Thanks Terry and Carole.

 

I recon it should be possible from Bortle 8, as with the moon up my skies ended up being B8-9 as well. But it would indeed require really long total exposure, so if you are able to get to darker skies it will make it a whole lot easier to get a decent image in much shorter time. I have been lucky with current weather. Hopefully after this week, I can get some more time in on some other dakr nebula(s) without the moon present.