Chasing Dark Nebulae: A Night Under Israel’s Pristine Skies with Roy Simanovich

Roy Simanovich, an avid astrophotographer from a heavily light-polluted area (Bortle 9), recently embarked on a solo journey to capture some of the dark nebulae. Let’s follow Roy on that unforgettable night…

So I was already planning to go to a dark sky location (I live in Bortle 9 area so I do need a trip) on a moonless night and I had no target in mind. I’ve found a dark nebulosity complex not far off Polaris when I searched for a target in Stellarium desktop. It was a constellation I’ve photographed before with two targets: the Iris Nebula (NGC 7023) and the Dark Shark Nebula (LDN 1235), so I decided to give it a go and saw that the ASIAir framed it correctly even though it didn’t show the nebulosity complex itself in the Sky Atlas – I used the star 77 Dra as the reference for the framing and saw that it was perfectly framed the same as I framed it in Stellarium.

I specifically drove to an even darker sky than my usual spot in the desert since I was going to capture a dark nebula, so I needed to get as far away from any city lights as possible. My chosen location was Nahal Paran (a seasonal stream that’s completely dry in most of the year) at the Negev Desert, one of the only areas in Israel with a dark sky, which most of it lies in a nature reserve. The Bortle scale in the location I was is somewhere between Bortle 3 and 4.

Originally I planned to go camping with friends but sadly they couldn’t make it so I drove alone on the weekend, for about 211 kilometers (131~ miles), which took me about 2.5 hours, and about 6km off-road.

I’ve parked my car as far away from other people as possible, and started to unpack my gear which also includes a small portable power station (302~ Wh), hooked everything up, did an almost perfect polar alignment with an RMS error of less than 30 arcseconds, did the guiding calibration, made an automatic plan and let the gear run for all night long. At the beginning of the session there were some high clouds so I lost about 20 minutes of data.

After I let it run, I’ve also unpacked my small canon mirrorless camera on a tripod, attaching a dummy battery to it which connected to a USB PD power bank, framed it so it will capture the whole gear with the milky way in the background and let it photograph a timelapse for over 7 hours.

At about 5 AM in the morning I woke up, took the flats and dark flats as I do after every session, packed my gear and drove back home, and started to process all the data I’ve captured in PixInsight, and I fell in love by the result, even though in total only 6 hours of data were viable.

Imaging Details
Targets: Cepheus Molecular Cloud Complex (LBN 550, LBN 552, LBN 555, LDN 1228)
Location: Desert — Bortle 3~
Exposure: 72 × 300s lights = 6 hours total
Telescope & Mount: Askar FRA300 Pro, ZWO AM3
Camera: ZWO ASI533MC Pro
Guiding: SVBony SV165 Mini Guider Scope 30mm, ZWO ASI120mm-s, ZWO EAF
Filter & Accessories: ZWO Filter Drawer, ASIAir Plus, Optolong UV/IR Cut 2”
Camera Settings: Gain 100 / Temperature 0°C (32°F)
Calibration Frames: 100 pre-calibrated darks, 30 flats, 30 dark flats

Timelapse Video Details:
Camera: Canon EOS R50
Lens: Sigma 17-50mm f2.8 EX DC OS HSM
Focal Length / Exposure / Aperture / ISO: 17mm, 10s, f2.8, ISO 6400
Intervalometer: Used my phone as the intervalometer (a paid app, since Canon R50 doesn’t support intervalometers)
Total Photos: 1019