NGC 2174 Monkey Head Nebula

[menardre]

The February issue of Sky & Telescope featured the bright knot NGC 2174 (along with the open cluster 2175). Technically NGC 2174 is only the bright knot, not the entire nebula. So I decided to give it a try.

This is an emission nebula in Orion ... high above Betelgeuse almost in Gemini. I may try imaging this nebula again using a filter.

It was a nice clear crisp night last night. I was able to image NGC2174/2175 and captured 130 images of 4 minute subs. NGC 2174 is very large, larger than the full Moon so I used my 90mm refractor and 0.8 focal reducer. The last several images were very low in the West so had to be discarded. I also took 50 flats. This time I let SGP to manage everything and only just checked after meridian flip to make sure everything was still on track. I still have the issue that once in a while my ZWO ASI 071 hangs on download. This almost always only happens with first few images. SGP V4 is now in beta testing and supports 64 bit operation which should help since the issue seems to be bus traffic using USB3 (I use a 15 ft USB3 active cable which makes matters worse).

Roger

NGC 2174 Processed.jpg (6.85 MiB) Viewed 778 times

NGC 2174 cropped-1.jpg (3.74 MiB) Viewed 778 times

[NGC7000]

That's really nice, Roger. I especially like how you teased out that smaller bit of nebulosity above it. You've really made this into a spectacular DSO.

I was playing with the same target last night with a 135mm lens, looking at a wider field. Unfortunately, my battery went dead on the remote after image number 5, so while I was toasty warm inside watching tv thinking I was grabbing 2 hours of images, I was plain wrong. Glad one of us prevailed.