Stan Noble warmed the judges’ cold winter with his “technically well executed image” of the California Nebula, taking the prize for Photo of the Week.
Capturing his data in Aneroid, Saskatchewan, Noble said he had not taken an image of the California Nebula before.
“I didn’t have a proper wide field rig,” he said. “Now with the RedCat I do.”
His observatory, named Far Point Station — “No, The Q haven’t been an issue, yet,” he said — is under Bortle 2 skies. He captured the image data over three nights December 25 to 27, 2019 while he waited for his main target to get high enough.
Noble said the telescope he used was a Williams Optics RedCat, f/4.9 at 250mm with a ZWO 294MC Pro camera using a Optolong LeNhance filter.
The mount was a Skywatcher AZ-EQ 6 GT and the guide scope was a Altair Lightwave 66 using a Altair GP224C camera. I used N.I.N.A for capture software and PHD2 for guiding.
“I have 64 120-second light frames with 30 dark, flat and bias frames stacked into this picture,” he said. “I used PixInsight and Photoshop for processing.”
The judges also wanted to give a special shout-out to another Saskatchewanian — Saskatoon’s Antony Tony, for his image of the Milky Way from the inside of a vehicle.
Taken on August 1, 2019 with Olympus OMD EM10 M II with an Olympus 8mm f/1.8 pro lens, Tony said he used ISO 1600 for a 30-second exposure, and he did not have to edit much.
