M68, M80, Pelican nebula, Barnard's Butterfly nebula

Click on an image to get a closer view

 M68: 

This is a tricky object to image from south Wales, due to it being so low down near the horizon, but on the night of the 16th May I was able to get just enough separate red, green and blue 2 minute subs to make a 30 minute integration. M 68 (NGC 4590) is a densely packed globular cluster in the southern hemisphere constellation of Hydra. It lies about 33,600 light-years away from Earth, orbiting our galaxy's galactic bulge some 100,000 light years from its centre. It is thought that the cluster may have been acquired in its gravitational tie to the Milky Way through accretion from a satellite galaxy in the distant past.

M80: 

M 80 (NGC 6093) is another  globular cluster that is not well placed for imaging from south Wales; lying in the constellation Scorpius lying midway between α Scorpii (Antares) and β Scorpii in a field in the Milky Way Galaxy that is rich in nebulæ. It lies around 32,600 light-years away, has a diameter of about 95 light-years and contains several hundred thousand stars; being one of the densest globular clusters in the Milky Way. 

M80 wide field incorporating part of the Rho Ophiuchi nebula:

A 2 pane mosaic of the north of the Ophiuchi star cloud, incorporating nearby globular cluster M80. This was just 50 minutes per panel of LRGBHa data. I processed the mosaic in 64bit in PI and then downscaled to 32bit to finish off in Photoshop in order to make the most of the limited data to bring out the dark nebula and black dust in this area of sky. I then down scaled it and saved it as a 16 bit png file. The area covers almost 3 degrees in width.

Pelican nebula:

Just 75 minutes of SHO data of the Pelican Nebula (IC 5070); an H II region lying close to the Star Deneb and the North America Nebula in the constellation of Cygnus resembling a Pelican.

Barnard's Butterfly nebula:

An hour of SHO data of this region of the Gamma Cygni nebula centred on Barnard 347 which resembles the iridescent wings of a Butterfly; hence the name. 

All images were acquired with NINA using an ASI 533MM Pro camera and mono filter wheel set attached to a Sky-Watcher Esprit 80 ED triplet refractor fitted with a field flattener.  Data were integrated and processed in Pixinsight and Adobe Photoshop 2025.

Chris Bowden