A Reflection Nebula in the constellation of Orion is called NGC 2064. Heinrich d'Arrest found it on January 11th, 1864. It is a member of a nebula group that also consists of Messier 78, NGC 2071, and NGC 2067, which is part of the Orion B molecular cloud complex and resides approximately 1350ly from Earth.
This is quite a faint object, with only the bright core being exposed during data collection, the details only come out after the images are stacked and stretched slightly. A lot of data is required for this object as it has a lot of dark structures.
NGC 2064 is situated near several other targets including, M78, NGC 2071 and NGC 2067. M78 is the most known target of the list and is also known as Casper the Friendly Ghost Nebula which is a Diffuse reflection Nebula. M78 is the Brightest of the group of Nebula (although My scope was targeting NGC 2064 for positioning)
The location of NGC 2064 is relatively easy to find (especially if you are auto guiding). It is located above Orion's belt, above the star Alnitak (Seen above). Through a scope, the bright core is viewable at dark locations which the structure and details coming out in a picture and hours of exposure.
This target needs to be targeted on a new moon when the sky is at its darkest to achieve the best results. This target was taken at my Bortal 4 location a day before the new moon and only consists of an hour and thirty mins of total data using my RASA setup.
Data was Stacked in Deep Sky Stacker and Processed in Pixinsight.
Data was Stacked in Deep Sky Stacker and Processed in Pixinsight.
- Scope – Celestron RASA 8
- Mount - Skywatcher EQ6 R Pro
- Guide scope – ZWO 30mm
- Guide Camera – ZWO ASI 120mm mini
- Main Camera – ZWO Asi 533mc Pro
- Control box – ZWO ASIAIR Pro
- Filter – Baader 2" UV/IR filter
- Starizona Filter drawer next to the camera sensor
- Fox Halo 96k power bank
- Dew heater with its own power bank on the guide scope
- Main scope Celestron ring dew heater powered though the ASIAir