A few nights ago, I attempted to image the Spaghetti Nebula – a supernova remnant in the constellation Taurus. It is so faint that I could not preview it even at ISO4000. So, I relied on the telescope mount to reach the right coordinates, and I took some pictures. Only later did I realize that the nebula subtends three degrees – about six times the apparent angular diameter of the full moon. That’s wider than my 130mm astrograph’s field of view. Alas, I need to play with those frames a bit more, but I am not optimistic that I can salvage any kind of respectable image.
Two nights ago, I set my sights on M1, the Crab Nebula, another supernova remnant, in Taurus. The Crab is the result of a supernova explosion that was recorded by Chinese astronomers in 1054. It is significantly brighter than the Spaghetti nebula. There were intermittent clouds, and although I took 47, 6-minute frames, only 38 were usable. Below is the composite image from those 38 frames (3.8 hrs of imaging) cropped to present the nebula at 2x the scale of the full 35mm frame. I’ve photographed this nebula at least once before with larger instruments, but never through a narrow-band filter (a Triad Quad-band filter, on this occasion).
