What do you do if a good friend asks you to go for the Squid in a collaboration? Well ... heck, count me in 😊. And that was exactly what Bruce asked me, and we went for it. It had to be a difficult target, especially considering the "wonderful" skies of Florida and being close to urban centers, so Bruce suggested Sh2-129, which is a perfect collaboration target.
We started up with the Hα channel since the moon was out, knowing that the OIII part for OU4 requires the best possible conditions. After passing the data, Bruce combined the images and the result was very encouraging, so one major part was on the shelf. Hoping for clear skies for the OIII around New Moon, and luckily enough, we got some very soon after. But then disaster struck for Bruce, his Baby-Q malfunctioned in the middle of gathering those precious OIII data. I passed again my data and Bruce combined, and well, what a difference a different filter can create. Major gradients at the edges, and since the FoV of our two rigs was not identical, it became a major challenge to combine those data.
In the meantime, I gathered more OIII data, hoping that it would help. It did ... but not significantly.
To make a long story short, OU4 was extracted out of the combined data, while the rest was taken from the wider field images. Processing the data was a challenge, to say the least. I don't think that the image above can be done much better with the acquired data, a little disappointing after spending a total of 58 hours. Still, it was a great time again to collaborate and finally a new image from Florida 😊!
Carpe Noctem!

From Sky & Telescope, bellavia:
The Giant Squid Nebula in Cepheus, cataloged as Ou4, which lies within the Flying Bat Nebula, SH2-129, both in Cepheus, is extremely faint, and was not discovered until 2011, by amateur astrophotographer Nicolas Outters of France. The field of view is 3 degrees or 6 Full Moons across. The Squid Nebula's blue-green emission is from doubly ionized oxygen atoms. Though apparently completely surrounded by the reddish hydrogen emission region Sh2-129, the true distance and nature of the Squid Nebula have been difficult to determine. More recent investigation suggests Ou4 really does lie within Sh2-129 some 2,300 light-years away. Consistent with that scenario, Ou4 would represent a spectacular outflow driven by HR8119, a triple system of hot, massive stars seen near the center of the nebula. The truly giant Squid Nebula would physically be nearly 50 light-years across.