So after my failure of 2 hours wasted imaging what I thought was the Jellyfish nebula I managed to get on target. This time I got 2 hours of exposures as follows

SVBony 80mm refractor f6 480mm focal length

SVC404cc color cooled astro camera -5°C

120 subs 90 seconds each (2 hours)

10x dark and 10x bias

The two bright stars Propus and Tejat are causing me issues. As you can see in the final image below, they re blowing out when I stretch the image. To get the Nebula details I needed to apply a pretty aggressive stretch. I’m thinking I need more subs on this target, so there’s more data and needs less stretching. After some discussion and feedback from the Facebook Beginners Astrophotography Group, I have determined that to minimize the star bloating a UV/IR cut filter will help. Unfortunately I only have Ha and OIII filters at this time. I have read an OIII filter can be used with the Jellyfish Nebula, so while waiting for the UV/IR filter to come I will that. Perhaps I can combine the data from the OIII filter with the RGB data through the UV/IR filter later.

Still I’m happy with this progress for 1 week into the hobby, my auto guiding was pretty spot on last night, the stars are sharp and no elongation, I need to work more on my post processing of the images and what kind of camera settings to use to make the most of the equipment.

The Jellyfish Nebula is the remnants of a Galactic Supernova Explosion that occurred around 30,000 years ago. It is approximately 5,000 light years away from earth. it can be found in the constellation of Gemini.