IC 1284 and M24
Emission nebula and the Small Sagittarius Star Cloud

10.1″ f/4.5, Mallincam DS432cTEC with 0.5 focal reducer and Astronomik UHC filter
Exposure = 10-18-25 sec, Live Stacked frames = 20-30-50 (100 total), Gain = 35 of 250

IC 1284 is a fairly bright emission nebula with an 8th magnitude star at its center. In the middle of the image here it appears largely rosy-pink with tinges of orange at the core and on the outer edges, about 20 arcminutes across. A couple of smaller, bright, pretty nebula about 5 arcminutes in size are evident below (south-west): NGC 6589 to the right appears to have a dark cleft through the middle; NGC 6590 is brighter and has an interesting dark speck cloud sitting in front of it. All three nebula are about 5500 light years away.

The entire area of this image is situated in a very bright portion of the Milky Way with many diffuse glowing regions and darker obscuring clouds scattered throughout. The brightest areas on the upper and lower right-side of the image are the southern-most reaches of the large nebula M24, the Small Sagittarius Star Cloud. M24 spans at least 2 degrees in the sky; in terms of actual physical size it is quite massive, approximately 15,000 light years in length and located over 10,000 light years away.

North at 1 o’clock, East at 10 o’clock