The Ring Nebula

A few nights ago while taking images of the moon I found the ring nebula for the first time. I took a few fast frames and tried stacking them to get a really rough first result. Being so dim I never really considered the ring nebula to be a possible target for me with my non-motorized dobsonian telescope, but it looked promising!

Last night I had good weather and a few hours before the full moon came up so I gave it a try. I used my 2x focal reducer to increase my telescopes field of view. This would allow me to take slightly longer exposures, a trick that worked really well on the Orion nebula.

Full image capture details were: 8” dobsonian telescope, 2x focal reducer, ZWO ASI290MC camera set to 515 gain and 400ms exposures. I ended up with 1061 individual frames which I stacked using Siril.

Color and level adjustments were made in GIMP. The color image is fascinating because you can see some hints of the beautiful colors in the nebula, but the black and white image is so much sharper. With an untracked antenna it’s extremely difficult to get color detail above the noise, so I’m pleased to have got anything at all!