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Incredible Narrowband Survey for Finding New Targets

Acquisition Narrowband Deep Sky
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The0s avatar
The0s avatar
Hey everyone,

I just wanted to share a great resource I just recently found for finding new narrowband targets - the Northern Sky Narrowband Survey by Stefan Ziegenbalg. It seems to be a high-resolution, very detailed, and very deep narrowband survey for the northern hemisphere, which covers a lot areas that are missing from all the other surveys I could find. Here's the link to their main page: https://simg.de/index.html.  Here's the link for the Aladin full survey map: https://simg.de/nebulae3/dr0_1/halpha/ (you'll need to up the brightness, contrast, and set an aggressive stretch to see anything). 

Edit: As others on this thread have said, please make sure to give proper credit to the creator of the survey if you use it to find new targets!

With that in mind, here's some interesting targets on the survey:

SNR (?):

Hints of a larger SNR in Auriga, near SH2-224:

Either a very large filament or a stitching artifact, plus the unnamed nebula around Pi Aquarii:

Have fun looking at the survey, and I hope I gave enough credit to the people who made it - it's pretty awesome!

Clear skies,

The0s
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The0s avatar
The0s avatar
Just some more interesting objects: this one's identified as a possible SNR in the uncatalogued list

Full Ursa Major SNR arc:
Jan Erik Vallestad avatar
Jan Erik Vallestad avatar
This is very interesting! I hope the creator gets credited if anyone uses his data to discover something for themselves though.
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Stacey Baczkowski avatar
Stacey Baczkowski avatar
This is great!  Thanks for posting about it.
Jeffbax Velocicaptor avatar
Jeffbax Velocicaptor avatar
Very interesting. He might have discovered a lot of uncatalogued objects.
JF
Chris Ashford avatar
Chris Ashford avatar
Thank you so much for sharing. The telescope set up and the resulting images are truly mind boggling. I could browse Stefan's website all day - what a wonderful resource for anyone looking for new and interesting targets.
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The0s avatar
The0s avatar
Just an update for anyone interested - looks like there's been a second data release with the full Aladin survey maps for OIII, SII, and continuum data. Lot's of cool stuff on there, probably some unimaged SNRs and other nebulae somewhere if you look close enough. Here's the link: https://www.simg1.de/nebulae3/dr0_2/ (you'll need to scroll down quite a ways to get to the HiPS table).

Edit: Scroll down a bit further for the incredible stats for this survey - over 740,000 individual exposures and 10,000 hours of imaging!
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Sam Badcock avatar
Sam Badcock avatar
This looks really awesome, is there any such case of someone doing the same for us in the southern hemisphere??
Ashraf AbuSara avatar
Ashraf AbuSara avatar
This is fantastic. For the seasoned NINA users here, is there a way to incorporate this into the framing assistant?
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andrea tasselli avatar
andrea tasselli avatar
Ashraf AbuSara:
This is fantastic. For the seasoned NINA users here, is there a way to incorporate this into the framing assistant?

You can use the files in the Framing Assistant, afaik.
The0s avatar
The0s avatar
Sam Badcock:
This looks really awesome, is there any such case of someone doing the same for us in the southern hemisphere??

I believe there's a few surveys ongoing, but nothing's been released yet. The closest I could find was the SuperCOSMOS H-alpha Survey here, but I think you have to download individual images for that - there's no full map like the NSNS.
The0s avatar
The0s avatar
For anyone interested (and who has a lot of time), here's a cool, ultra-faint object: SNR G159.6+07.3. Doesn't look like it's ever been imaged on AstroBin, but the few images on the discovery paper here makes it seem very interesting. You can also see the somewhat brighter and more popular SNR G156.2+5.7 on the right. Center coordinates are 05 19 60.00 +49 59 60.0, seems like it's visible in Ha and SII but very faint in OIII.
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Bray Falls avatar
Bray Falls avatar
For anyone interested (and who has a lot of time), here's a cool, ultra-faint object: SNR G159.6+07.3. Doesn't look like it's ever been imaged on AstroBin, but the few images on the discovery paper here makes it seem very interesting. You can also see the somewhat brighter and more popular SNR G156.2+5.7 on the right. Center coordinates are 05 19 60.00 +49 59 60.0, seems like it's visible in Ha and SII but very faint in OIII.

This one is giga-faint. If you try it you'll need 300hrs+ with something fast from dark skies
Kevin Morefield avatar
Kevin Morefield avatar
Hey everyone,

I just wanted to share a great resource I just recently found for finding new narrowband targets - the Northern Sky Narrowband Survey by Stefan Ziegenbalg. It seems to be a high-resolution, very detailed, and very deep narrowband survey for the northern hemisphere, which covers a lot areas that are missing from all the other surveys I could find. Here's the link to their main page: https://simg.de/index.html.  Here's the link for the Aladin full survey map: https://simg.de/nebulae3/dr0_1/halpha/ (you'll need to up the brightness, contrast, and set an aggressive stretch to see anything).

I didn't see a place to alter the brightness, contrast or stretch.  Where is that done?

Thanks,

Kevin
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andrea tasselli avatar
andrea tasselli avatar
Click on the stack and then settings, as shown:
The0s avatar
The0s avatar
@Kevin Morefield Personally, I click on Stack, then Settings, then navigate to the box on the far right (looks like a histogram), set stretch to asinh, then play around with the max cut (200 shows most of the bright stuff, 80 most of the ultra-faint). This seems to show a lot more faint stuff than using the brightness sliders.

Edit: There's also a pre-stretched, 8 bit PNG version of the survey on the website if you don't want the hassle - it doesn't show quite as much though
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Ali Alhawas avatar
Ali Alhawas avatar
Awesome efforts!
 Any chance for colored camera in this survey or its only for NB?
andrea tasselli avatar
andrea tasselli avatar
I have already posted the link in another thread but it seems fit to replicate it here. They have both false-colour (NB) survey as well continuum (though this one is not as much useful):

Northern Sky Narrowband Survey
Northern Sky Narrowband Survey: DR0.2 (Draft)
Simon avatar
Simon avatar

Yes I found his survey via Stellarium the other day. Then looked him up. What a fantastic, amazing, insanely gifted and ingenious man!!! Like, it’s such a massive and detailed survey, just dropped with nil fanfare or self-promoting social media posts. I actually started trawling the net and he has very little presence, is clearly very scientific/professional, publishes quite a few research /discovery articles. Could only find a german Pastor, might actually be him I reckon.

His site is superb, and yes, he lists dozens of undiscovered target types in his survey, makes a mockery of those sorts that boast that they have amazingly imaged a rarely photographed area never seen by mere humans. Damn I would almost pay him to come down south and do a survey here in Australia. Very inspirational, and quite humbling (I’m using that word in its correct way here). And yes, it’s a mega-useful survey for good targets/compositions.

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Simon avatar
Simon avatar

and here’s his simple, clear, matter of fact listing of half the galaxy’s uncatalogued items that he’s listed!! Love the approach

https://www.simg.de/catalog/

The0s avatar
The0s avatar

In case anyone is looking for a cool, obscure late-season target, here's one I found using the survey: Fr 2-15, a potential planetary nebula in Delphinus. The only image of it on AstroBin - likely the first public image of it on the Internet, published only 3 months ago - only barely shows the structure, which seems interesting in both Ha and OIII. It seems relatively large and bright, so it should be a lot more doable than some of the fainter targets mentioned in this thread.

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