Melotte 31 and the Tadpoles

Overview

I quite often look at my astrophotography work and see flaws and areas of improvement or things that I wish I had done differently to improve the image. This is one of those rare times when I feel like my work leveled up and that I nailed the image.

This composition includes Melotte 31, an often referred to cluster of stars as the Minnow, on the left, and IC 410 (The Tadpole Nebula) on the right. Both objects are in the constellation Auriga. The Tadpole Nebula is a bright emission nebula about 100 lightyears wide and 12,400 ly distant.

I’ve not really spent the time to image many nebulae is broadband but I often forget just how beautiful these things can look in their natural colors. This project combines 25 hrs of total integration time across my LRGB filters.