NGC 6729 & Co. From southern skies

I have finally managed to find some time to post some new content on my website. I have a huge processing backlog, such that I could go on for several months without any additional imaging trips J

In the meantime, however, here is an image of an object from my trip to Tivoli Farm, Namibia, for July 2019’s New Moon phase. It’s the nebular complex of NGC 6729 in constellation Corona Australis. It’s an area of the sky chock-full of stars and celestial objects, mainly reflection nebulae: NGC 6726, NGC 6727, NGC 6729 (the small, arc-shaped nebula), surrounded by a host of molecular and dark clouds. To top it all off, there’s also NGC 6723, a globular cluster, at the top right corner. This area of the sky can also be observed and imaged from our latitudes, but given the southerly declination, locations in the southern hemisphere offer much better conditions.

26 exposures of 10 minutes in the L channel plus 4 10-minute exposures for each color filter R, G and B were acquired for a total of 380 minutes (6h20m). Imaging train: Moravian G2-8300 CCD camera @ -30 C , Astro-Physics AP 127 refractor (127 mm aperture, 1016 mm focal length) on a Fornax 51 equatorial mount.

Below are two versions of the composite. One was processed by me, while the other was processed by my good friend Edoardo Radice. Both were processed almost only in PixInsight, with Adobe Photoshop for some minor editing. Although I am quite happy with my version, Edoardo’s is sharper and sports more vivid colors. Different image processing skills :-)

My version:

Edoardo's version: