VdB 144 is a very faint reflection nebula around an orange K0III star.
Usually these are found around blue giant stars not orange giant ones
though it is so bright in my image it looks rather white due to a
monitor's limited response. The nebula is about 700 light years distant
in the northeastern part of Cygnus the Swan. At least that is the
distance The Sky gives for its illuminating star HD 206509 (44453700
AU). Since the nebula is very blue the star has to be behind it
otherwise it would pick up a lot of the color of the star and that seems
totally missing. Due to the spectral difference I was able to rather
reduce the star without harming the nebula, something that's almost
impossible when it is lit by a blue giant.
When I went to process this image I found the luminance frames all
unusable as some idiot left the lights on in the observatory! I was
going to retake them but see that never happened. Fortunately the color
was taken the following night and I had apparently shut off the lights
as they all were fine. So I made a pseudo luminance frame from the 6
color frames. This is why I normally don't bin color differently than
the lights. It saves your backside sometimes! This meant I didn't go
as deep as I would have liked but the result is pretty good. I tried to
compare this to other images on the net but other than POSS images
Google didn't turn any up other than this great wide field image of Tom
Davis,
http://www.tvdavisastropics.com/astr...s-1_0000c6.htm . His
image is west at the top so rotate it clockwise 90 degrees to match
mine. Or rotate mine 90 degrees counter-clockwise to match his.
14" LX200R @ f/10, Pseudo L=6x10' RGB=2x10', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME
Rick
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