M1 The Crab nebula. This supernova remnant lies in the constellation of Taurus the Bull at a distance of about 6,000 light years. Lying in its centre is the Crab pulsar rotating at a speed of 30 times per second. I took this image under foggy conditions with cloud cover closing in giving me only about 40 minutes of imaging time. I used my set of Astronomik narrowband filters SII, H-alpha and OIII and was only able to get total exposure times of ten minutes for the SII and OIII channels plus a total exposure time of 20 minutes for the H-alpha channel. I then combined the data with some old R.G.B. data resulting a smoother image reducing the amount of noise in the image.
I captured five minute sub frames with matching dark frames and combined them with flat field frames to reduce the effect of vignetting in the final image. The telescope I was using was my ten
inch f/4.8 reflector with a Vixen Atlux mount, PHD auto guiding and an Atik 383L mono CCD camera.
Narrowband Hubble Palette
RGB
Narrowband Huble Palette plus RGB
