NGC 2175 The Monkey Head Nebula - 21 Feb 2025

Seestar S50

This evening I set up the Seestar S50 on the driveway shortly before sundown, leveled it (0.0), and pointed it toward the S sky where NGC 2175 The Monkeyhead Nebula was residing. It would take another hour or so before the Seestar was able to pick up enough stars to perform horizontal calibration, locate, and begin enhancing 10-second frames to begin the night’s stack. I would hook up a 20,000 mA battery to it and let it run ‘till 5 am the next morning where I found it pointing to the ground in the NW direction.

I examined the Seestar stacked fit but was not thrilled with the result, even after processing it in Siril, GraXpert, Cosmic Clarity and Photoshop: 667 x 10 sec. subs

so I combined the data from tonight’s run with the data from 26 Jan 2025 to create the image shown (top). I’m very happy that I was able to bring out the OIII (blue) in the center of the nebula to go with the H-alpha (red). The total integration was 2382 x 10 sec.