Instrument

Takahashi FSQ-106ED @ f/5.0 (530 mm F.L.) Captured at 2.1 arcsec/pixel.  Shown at 2.5 and 9.33 arcsec/pixel.

Mount

Paramount MyT

Camera

SBIG STF-8300M Self Guiding Package w/ mono ST-i, using AstroDon E-Series LRGB filters.

Acquisition Data

9/20/2017 to 10/1/2019  Chino Valley, AZ with CCD Commander, CCDSoft and TheSkyX

Exposure

Software

• CCDSoft, PixInsight & Photoshop CS6.

• eXcalibrator v6.2 for (g:r),(b:r) color balancing, using 279 stars from the Pan-STARRS database.

• PixInsight processing includes sub-exposure calibration, CosmeticCorrection, data  rejection, mean combine sub-exposures, MureDenoise applied to the luminance image, create the LRGB image, gradient removal, non-linear stretching with HistogramTransformation, BackgroundNeutralization and StarNet to create a star mask.

• PhotoShop for the annotation text and JPEG creation.

Comment

North is to the top.

LBN 468 is a large faint nebula in the constellation Cepheus. Within LBN 468, Beverly Lynds cataloged several dark nebulae, as indicated in the above annotated view. Near the upper left corner is the small blue reflection nebula GN 20.45.4. Farther to the right is the small bright nebula [B77] 38.

Near the lower right corner is a bright red Mira-type variable star, simply designated as "V* IN Cep". Mira-type variable stars are very cool red giants with temperatures around 3000° K. They are very large, 200 to 300 times the radius of the Sun, and very luminous-3000 to 4000 times the Sun. I originally thought this was an image flaw. :-}