Print - The Lobster Claw!

The Lobster Claw nebula is located approximately 11,050 light years away in the constellation of Cassiopeia. It is a beautiful mixing zone of gasses including hydrogen, sulfur, and oxygen! 

This is a collaboration with photographer Oliver Carter (@bright_ascension)! We wanted to display the Lobster Claw as never seen before by combining many hours of photographs! 

Photographs were captured in Portland, Oregon and Leesburg, Virginia, in the summer of 2024. I completed the image integration and processing of this image. 

This image is the integration of 1,434 photographs with a total integration time of  majority of which were 15-minute exposures, with a total integration time of 164 hours.  Photos were captured in the summer of 2024, using Sulfur, Hydrogen, and Oxygen filters to highlight the dense gasses in the region, and stars were captured with red, green, and blue filters.

Equipment:   Skywatcher Esprit 120mm refractor telescope
                       William Optics 120mm refractor telescope
                       QHY600M camera & ASI6200M

Software:      PixInsight; Russel Crowman’s: BlurX, StarX, NoiseX; Photoshop