Empire Ranch or Las Cienegas National Conservation Area: Astrophotography
October 13, 2017

The California Nebula at 500mm. I've done this before at shorter focal lengths. At 500mm
there is a lot more detail in the stellar dust clouds. This nebula is so large it fills the frame at 500mm.

I copied this from Wikipedia:   The California Nebula (NGC 1499) is an emission nebula located in the constellation Perseus. It is so named because it appears to resemble the outline of California on long exposure photographs. It is almost 2.5° long on the sky and, because of its very low surface brightness, it is extremely difficult to observe visually. It can be observed with a Hβ filter (isolates the Hβ line at 486 nm) in a rich-field telescope under dark skies. It lies at a distance of about 1,000 light years from Earth. Its fluorescence is due to excitation of the Hβ line in the nebula by the nearby prodigiously energetic O7 star, xi Persei (also known as Menkib.

This is NCG 457, AKA the Dragonfly Cluster, ET Cluster, Owl Cluster, and some other nicknames.
I copied this from Wikipedia:  NGC 457 is an open star cluster in the constellation Cassiopeia. It was discovered by William Herschel in 1787, and lies over 7,900 light years away from the sun. It has an estimated age of 21 million years. The cluster is sometimes referred by amateur astronomers as the Owl Cluster, Kachina Doll Cluster, the ET Cluster (due to its resemblance to the movie character) or the "Skiing Cluster". Two bright stars, magnitude 5 Phi-1 Cassiopeiae and magnitude 7 Phi-2 Cassiopeiae can be imagined as eyes. The cluster features a rich field of about 150 stars of magnitudes 12-15.


Also in the constellation Cassiopeia are the faint nebulas IC 63 and IC 59.  A combination of emission and reflection nebulas, they are energized the huge star Gamma Cassiopeia, also known as Navi. The star was nicknamed Navi by astronaut Gus Grissom (one of the original Project Mercury astronauts), whose middle name was Ivan (full name Virgil I. Grissom). Navi is Ivan spelled in reverse. I have no idea if this is in any way related to the Na'vi  in the movie Avatar. I was hoping this would turn out better, but it looks like I need a lot more photons.

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