M1 – The Crab Nebula
 

A star in the constellation Taurus exploded as a supernova in the year 1054, and created this expanding cloud of gas. It was cataloged by Charles Messier as the first in his list of objects that could be mistaken for comets. M1 is about 6,300 light years away from us.


>The Crab Nebula

Equipment
 Celestron 9¼" at f/5.5 on a Celestron CGE equatorial mount
SBIG ST-8XM camera
Optec TCF-S focuser
Imaging and autoguiding with MaxIm DL 4.04
Exposure
Luminance   41 x 2 minutes, binned 1x1, -20°C
Red   43 x 1 minute, binned 2x2, -20°C
Green   43 x 1 minute, binned 2x2, -20°C
Blue   43 x 1 minute, binned 2x2, -20°C
Processing Master dark frames: 36 frames, sigma-reject combined
Dark and flat reduction in CCDSoft
All images sigma-reject combined
LRGB-combine and other processing in Photoshop CS
Date and Location 11 & 16 December 2004    Montpelier, VA    N 37° 49' 12", W 77° 42' 06"