NGC2174, also known as "The Monkey Head Nebula," is an emission nebula located about 6400 light years away in the constellation Orion, just southwest of the star Propus, and is associated with the open star cluster NGC2175.
This image was exposed in full color and through filters having extremely narrow bandwidths to capture only the light emitted by hydroben (red) and oxygen (blue-green) when excited by stellar radiation.
| Exposure |
• 15¼ hours (91 x 10 min.) @ -20°C • Dusk flats • Camera position angle: 55° • Narrowband subs allowed imaging in bright moonlight in 2019. ☞ 16 O-iii (blue-green) ☞ 23 H-α (red) • In 2022 I added nearly 9 hours of full-color data to the narrowband. ☞ 52 full-color |
| Processing |
• With PixInsight: ☞ Calibration and star registeraton ☞ Subframe integration ☞ Histogram transformation ☞ Background noise reduction • Final tweaking in Photoshop CS6 |
| Date and Location |
• October 18, 2019 • December 27 & 28, 2022 • Louisa County, Virginia, USA |
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Equipment |
• TMB-130SS APO refractor @ f/7 on an A-P 1200 mount • ZWO ASI-1600MC Pro color camera • Imaging and autoguiding with MaxIm DL 6.20 • Guided with an ST-402 camera on a 60mm f/5 scope |
Updated May 23, 2023