The Wizard Nebula or NGC 7380 is technically an open cluster of stars and is still fairly young, but it is known for its emission nebula. NGC 7380 sits in the constellation Cepheus. Discovered by Caroline Herschel in 1787 and her brother, William Herschel, added it to his catalogue labelling it H VIII.77. In 1959 the Nebula was added to the Sharpless catalogue labelled sh2-142 (Chen et al., 2011)
The Wizard Nebula is an exceedingly difficult target to see visually and requires dark skies and an O-III filter. But photographing this target can be extremely easy and rewarding. NGC 7380 is 8500Ly away with the open cluster spanning ~20Ly (Chen et al., 2011) with age estimates from 4-11 Million years (Zhen et al., 2009) and has an apparent magnitude of 7.2.
Multiple variable stars have been identified in the cluster, seventeen are main-sequence stars in the B-type variables category and fourteen are pre-main-sequence stars. The central star DH Cephei a binary (spectroscopic) system consisting of two large O-type stars is the primary source for ionizing for the surrounding HII region, triggering star formation (Lata et al., 2016).
The Wizard Nebula is an exceedingly difficult target to see visually and requires dark skies and an O-III filter. But photographing this target can be extremely easy and rewarding. NGC 7380 is 8500Ly away with the open cluster spanning ~20Ly (Chen et al., 2011) with age estimates from 4-11 Million years (Zhen et al., 2009) and has an apparent magnitude of 7.2.
Multiple variable stars have been identified in the cluster, seventeen are main-sequence stars in the B-type variables category and fourteen are pre-main-sequence stars. The central star DH Cephei a binary (spectroscopic) system consisting of two large O-type stars is the primary source for ionizing for the surrounding HII region, triggering star formation (Lata et al., 2016).
The above images were taken in late 2021 when the long nights gave the advantage of being able to expose for lengthy periods in one night. These pictures are my first attempt at NGC 7380 were taken with my ZWO ASI 178mc (non-cooled) camera taking 5-minute exposures with no filter (left) for 7 hours and the right was with the Altair tri-band for 8 hours. In the left picture, the stars are bloated, and it took multiple exposures to get the HII data. A good example is to either reduce the exposure time or use UV/IR filters to help with the star bloat.
I revisited this target but using the 533mc Pro and comparing all the pictures. The above picture was stacked with Deep Sky Stacker and processed in GIMP and Siril. The new pictures below were stacked with DeepSkyStacker and processed with Pixinsight. You can clearly see the differences between the two cameras and two processing software, which give very different results.
The pictures above were my first serious attempt at Emission nebula, learning quickly that I needed a filter and redoing the target with the new filter I purchased at short notice. But the difference is noticeably clear, even more so with the below pictures once I purchased a cooled camera and a high-end filter.
I revisited this target but using the 533mc Pro and comparing all the pictures. The above picture was stacked with Deep Sky Stacker and processed in GIMP and Siril. The new pictures below were stacked with DeepSkyStacker and processed with Pixinsight. You can clearly see the differences between the two cameras and two processing software, which give very different results.
The pictures above were my first serious attempt at Emission nebula, learning quickly that I needed a filter and redoing the target with the new filter I purchased at short notice. But the difference is noticeably clear, even more so with the below pictures once I purchased a cooled camera and a high-end filter.
Below are more recent attempts at the Wizard Nebula. The left hand side was with the 72ed and L extreme filter from Optolong. The right hand side was with the RASA and 533mc with IDAS NBZ filter. the differences are the 72ed was 6.4 hours total exposure and the RASA is only an hour total exposure time.