Spaghetti Nebula

The Spaghetti nebula also named Simeis 147 or Sharpless 2-240 is an extremely faint nebula created by a supernova explosion. It is located between the constellations Auriga and Taurus in the Milky Way. The discovery of this nebula in 1952 was a part of a survey conducted between 1945 – 55 at the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory on the Crimean peninsula.

This object is one of the toughest I´ve engaged myself in this far. I used the RedCat 51 telescope with a large field of view because the nebula is quite large. Also the sensitive ZWO ASI2600 camera was used. By studying how others had photographed  the nebula I learned that it is mainly made up of hydrogen and oxygen so narrowband imaging with Ha and Oiii filters should be perfect. When it was time to photograph it I didn’t know what the camera rotation should be or if the nebula would fit in the camera sensor. Taking a long test shot didn’t reveal any of the dust clouds so that didn’t help. Finally I had to navigate by looking at the stars surrounding the nebula and comparing them with existing photographs of the nebula, and this actually did the trick! The oxygen signal turned out to be very weak and I am not satisfied with how the result came out after 9 hours of Oiii exposures. I have a strong feeling that I will return to this object for more data in the future.