NGC6188 – Dragons of Ara

Imaged through May 2023 over several nights in between clouds and rain, this is my first attempt at imaging the Fighting Dragons of Ara (NGC6188), also known as The Rim Nebula.

Also in this image is the open cluster NGC6193 and the planetary nebula NGC6164 – The Dragon’s Egg.


NGC 6188 – Fighting Dragons of Ara

SHO pallette

Full Size .tiff here


NGC 6188 – Fighting Dragons of Ara

HOO pallette

Full size .tif here


Image Details :
50 x 600s of Ha, Oiii and Sii
100x 600s darks and 100 Bias frames for calibration

Equipment :
Skywatcher ED80 on the Ioptron CEM60 mount control via the Ioptron StarFi module
ASI1600MM-C cooled mono camera set at -10C, 1×1 binning with gain @ 139
Astronomik 1.25″ Ha, Oiii & Sii filters mounted in the ZWO EFW-mini Filter Wheel
Moonlite crayford focuser with Motor control
ASI120c guide camera with 60280 Guidescope
PegasusAstro Pocket PowerBox Advance for power distribution, USB hub and Dew Control
Mounted on the secondary pier and remotely run via a scope mounted NUC mini pc.

Processing software :
Mount interface with Ioptron Commander
Guiding by PHD2
Image Capture controlled by Sequence Generator Pro (SGPro)
Image Calibration, Registration, Stacking, Combination, Deconvolution and Star seperation by PixInsight
Image stretching and final processing in Photoshop


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