How I discovered the Hummingbird Nebula

I share the full story of discovering a faint reflection nebula around the star V374 Cep in the constellation Cepheus that I have named Carver 1 or 'The Hummingbird Nebula.' Photos on astrobin: www.astrobin.com/3stv25/ (new!) www.astrobin.com/3zm108/ (initial) For those curious about making discoveries themselves, I break down some of the tools one can use for research. See below for links.
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💻 Links for Resources mentioned in the video 💻
Astrobin: www.astrobin.com/accounts/reg...
CDS Portal: cdsportal.u-strasbg.fr/
ADS: ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/
Aladin: aladin.cds.unistra.fr/
Telescope Live: telescope.live/
Spitzer Space Telescope Press: www.spitzer.caltech.edu/news/...

[@AstrophotographyQuest]

One time I thought I discovered a nebula, yet I didn’t because it was lens flare lol.

[@NebulaPhotos]

Yes, common problem - people in my instagram DMs often think they are UFOs too

[@samwarfelphotos]

Ooh, I want to see a video on your strange Instagram DMs 🤣

[@leec6788]

Once thought I see a ufo, turned out to be alcohol

[@marxiewasalittlegirl]

I discovered a galaxy that way. It was quite bright

[@nomisastro2000]

But it was YOUR lens flare, and no one can take that away from you 😊

[@LogansAstro]

Congratulations on finding your first object and officially opening the Caver catalogue.

[@lukomatico]

Hands down the best astronomy video I've watched all year!! So darn pleased for you Nico, well done my friend!! 👍👍

[@NebulaPhotos]

Thank you so much Luke!!

[@gummiSKY]

You are to blame, Nico, that I started with astrophotography! 😉 Nobody takes so much time to explain all aspects and "hurdles" in detail and make it seem "easy" - especially post-processing. 🤓 Thx a lot for your very appreciated efforts and many greetings from Germany. Joerg😅

[@NebulaPhotos]

Cheers Joerg - I'm not sorry 😁

[@asdfqwergg]

Joerg I also got my start with Nico. I agree with everything you said. I got a image of the Orion Nebula first on my phone, then a single exposure, finally had a good night to spend hours capturing the light. I had Nico talking me through the processing on one monitor and on the other my own work. Step by step till I got an image I was proud of. This video made me so happy for Nico to not only see and capture something few will ever see, but also find that he was the first to catalog it. Congrats Nico

[@Outdoorastro]

Absolutely insane man! Such a big accomplishment. You are one of the reasons i got into this!

[@NebulaPhotos]

Thank you!

[@sweetbushstudiochannel4606]

Congratulations Niko!! Great job catching that!

[@WokeWeary]

Dude - congrats on Humming Bird nebula!! Totally see it. That is so awesome to have a discovery permanently accredited to you.

[@andyhook1673]

Your enthusiasm is infectious, no wonder so many people blame you for falling into the rabbit hole that is our hobby. Myself included. No better person to discover new objects. Looking forward to carver 2

[@NebulaPhotos]

Thanks Andy! Here's hoping!

[@oldfilmguy9413]

Congrats!! What an honor and accomplishment!

[@ruiner101]

Bad ass!!!!! Congratulations, my dude!

[@NebulaPhotos]

Thank you!

[@High2you311]

Simply awesome, thank you for sharing!

[@Amp_Astro]

Congratulations on the nebula discovery!

[@NebulaPhotos]

Thank you!

[@greglight5808]

Congrats Nico. This is awesome

[@ThePinoyAggie]

Congrats Man! That's awesome!

[@markos.5539]

AstroJesus back with one banger of content!

[@NebulaPhotos]

Ha, thanks!

[@ColinDane]

Congrats Nico, very cool video dude

[@NebulaPhotos]

Thank you Colin!

[@dalehollenbaugh6084]

Congratulations, Nico!

[@dbkokinda]

You are highly instrumental in me getting into AP. Thank you for all your time and effort! Congratulations!

[@X_Excelsior]

Absolutely incredible discovery! Thank you for making that video. 👍

[@NebulaPhotos]

Thank you!

[@hawk120]

Wow! Love it... so awesome! Big fan of your channel Nico!

[@TermoneenyCC]

I find this just super cool Nico, I just love how, so many telescopes and eyes have trained on our night sky's over the last century's and yet new discovery's are possible, its amazing just how big the universe really is.

[@superdurppig8686]

Its like you read my mind man. I've just started getting into this specific niche of this already niche field.

[@NebulaPhotos]

Awesome!

[@seventhsun1]

Great job Nico! congrats!

[@NebulaPhotos]

Thanks!!

[@afryhover]

Congrats Nico, that's really cool. I've notices a lot of little nebulae etc from my data too. Thanks for showing us how we can check to see if they are known or not. 👍

[@NebulaPhotos]

Thanks Andy!

[@ssrattus]

Congratulations Nico!

[@Avanteesh_Astro206]

Congratulations on the Discovery Nico!! Its a Great feeling when you stumble across, a Random object in the night sky and See something unusual, Because none has Really Seen Them Before, All this is Hidden Gems!

[@DeepSpaceAstro]

Fantastic! This is bucket list stuff Nico! Congrats!

[@NebulaPhotos]

Thanks Rich!

[@Si-fp2ij]

Congrats on your discovery Nico, fantastic work! 👏🏻👏🏻🌌

[@gregmac8268]

Wow, well done, love your work...

[@jonathanpearceff]

Brilliant discovery!

[@NebulaPhotos]

Thanks Jonathan!

[@stefangapko]

Congrats Nico, You deserve this success!

[@NebulaPhotos]

Thank you!

[@kidisgod]

Too cool. Congratulations.

[@Cdubwow]

Can't wait to see your video. You definitely have my favorite channel Nico

[@NebulaPhotos]

Thanks!

[@omelletedelastreet9969]

Really Nice discovery

[@NebulaPhotos]

Thank you!

[@ronhaggett2211]

One of your best presentations ever. Good job, and congratulations on your discovery!

[@NebulaPhotos]

Thank you!

[@mtbevins]

Wow! Congratulations on this find. You have the best most educational astronomy channels hands down. Your organized way of explaining and conveying complex concepts are a gift to us all. Thank you so much.

[@GediAstro]

Wow congratulations on the discovery! Great name also! Will try to confirm the discovery some time :)

[@NebulaPhotos]

Thanks! Please do!

[@colinmetzler]

Such a great video, thank you for your content : D 🙌

[@notmyname327]

This is SO cool! Congratulations on the discovery. This was a really interesting video, thank you so much for sharing the whole process!

[@kacpermichno]

That's so awesome!!!!

[@kayasper6081]

That is so cool, congrats! The last couple of nights I have been out and already happy to find objects like the NGC7293. You are defenitely on another level. I wish more "Carvers" will get listed soon. By the way, also interesting that you rented three hours on the Spanish telescope; that is were I live😊

[@mistaskate8715]

Well done!

[@mr.o4588]

Hey Nico, congrats from Germany. What a honor to discover something out there. Here in Germany Astro is a very underrated hobby but a German KZbinr „Astro Photo Cologne“ made a video about discovery’s from amateurs… since then I really want to discover something like you did! So thanks for the tutorial how to check for new objects! Really appreciate your videos and it’s always a pleasure to notice about a new one from you! Have a great day& thanks for your videos! Greetings from Erlangen in Bavaria! Jürgen

[@NebulaPhotos]

That's great Jürgen! I wish you luck in your hunt!

[@mediocrefunkybeat]

Congratulations, Nico! Just goes to show what's out there. Between this and the OIII cloud near Andromeda earlier this year I think we're in an incredibly exciting new era of amateur discoveries with small telescopes at high resolution.

[@alandyer910]

Congratulations 👏! Great story and detective work. I was thinking this might be some type of variable reflection nebula that changes as the star varies. So it eluded detection until now. But if it was on the digitized glass Palomar Sky Survey it’s been there for decades. Well done!

[@NebulaPhotos]

Thank you Alan!

[@my-pixels]

This is so awesome! I can only imagine what was going through your mind when you started to understand that you discovered a new nebula. Thanks Nico!

[@-Jeremiah-]

Nico, This is a fantastic story. Thank you. I am less than a year into learning this hobby and in a recent shoot of Rho Ophiuchi I "found" NGC-6144. Obviously I didn't discover it but because I'm limited in my exposure length until I can make this ASI work correctly I had much less nebulosity and dust. So the smaller cluster in frame was much more visible than it usually is in pictures of that area. Great video timing for me, and another great video from you. Cheers.

[@NebulaPhotos]

Thanks! It would have been fun to include all my "false discoveries" over the years, but the video would last hours. Some of the more obscure stuff has been 'found' but never photographed outside of the professional surveys

[@iBoohjep]

Wow! Congrats Nico!

[@tomrohrer1280]

Congrats for this big work and this discovery ! Keep it up Nico !

[@LeeMize]

I feel like your librarian background really assisted you in this research. Very thorough and methodical. I love it! 🤓

[@jimgarasich7328]

Very cool 👍 Nico !

[@declanraven2350]

You are true inspiration to so many astronomers like myself! Congratulations on your discovery and I look forwards to the rest of the Carver catalogue :)

[@thhall459]

Awesome video! Good on you for finding and naming your own nebula, then sharing your work flow with us armchair astronomers!

[@NebulaPhotos]

Thank you! My pleasure

[@HogarthsAstrophotography]

Wow. What a great video and fantastic explanation of the process, history and results. So happy for you Nico, your infectious attitude is 2nd to none.

[@stuTheAlien]

Wow nice one Nico

[@NebulaPhotos]

Thanks Stu!

[@hasansps6427]

Just goes on to show that you don't need to have an observatory level rig to be able to find something new in the night sky. With just your amateur equipment, dedication and of course clear skies😄, you can capture almost anything in the night sky or possibly even stumble upon something new. This is a really great video showing and explaining the whole process in depth and hats off to you Nico, you have encouraged and influenced many people like me to see and image the heavens above us. I'll be waiting for the second entry in that Carver catalogue!

[@tootlepipski]

Well done Nico, nice find.

[@shrijan1334]

Big fan sir

[@NebulaPhotos]

Thank you!

[@EvenTheDogAgrees]

19:17: "...how I keep the lights on" And that's when I stopped taking you serious as an astronomer. 🤣

[@NebulaPhotos]

Lol

[@markwood1660]

Another excellent video Nico, and well done on finding such a faint object. I wish I had your commitment and dedication :)

[@NebulaPhotos]

Thanks Mark!

[@megthrash4617]

Coolest thing ever! Congratulations! And I love the name and I see the hummingbird!

[@DTOMSMISORANGE]

Yo that’s amazing!

[@NebulaPhotos]

Thanks!

[@deansongberg6891]

Brilliant work niko, hope you'll be able to add more discoveries to you catalogue in the future. I once thought i found something, again like most comments here it was a lens flare that had formed a perfect halo around a star.

[@NebulaPhotos]

Thank you! Ah, that sounds super deceptive! How did you realize what it was?

[@deansongberg6891]

@@NebulaPhotos I imaged the same star another night and also had a friend take a look to to try and confirm it or not.

[@stay_at_home_astronaut]

Mazel Tov!

[@NebulaPhotos]

Thank you!

[@M1lls43]

Congrats Nico! Could you make a short video in the future about post processing, general steps, what to look for, etc? I've watched your post processing videos and they're great but there's a lot of info spread out over 40 ish minutes at times, and for someone who is not great (read as have no idea what to do) in post processing, a condensed version would be fantastic. Cheers!

[@NebulaPhotos]

Thanks for the idea, I'll definitely think about it and see if I can come up with something

[@DrBilly619]

So great of you to show your process

[@shia4]

Congrats 🎉🤩

[@thomg3775]

Congratulations on you discovery.

[@alakbaraliyev9460]

Congrats from Azerbaijan🇦🇿, you are inspiration for astrophotographers that live all over the globe🙌👏

[@dominiclester3232]

Very interesting, thanks and well done 👏👏👏

[@freddylq67]

That's so cool. Congrats 👍.

[@stevebarkes7939]

Congratulations Nico on your discovery!!! I really enjoyed this video and all that you do. I really liked the details on how you came up with the name for Carver 1!! I've been fascinated by hummingbirds for years here in New Mexico and it makes perfect sense.

[@tamasstangli]

Congratulations! You and your channel is amazing👏😄

[@danielgong22]

Congrats. Thanks for sharing the excitement!

[@beteljooz6180]

That is so awesome and inspiring. Congrats!

[@stevenchurch8901]

I will never unsee the skeleton hand 😆

[@arianest.claire4466]

Looking at those maps:) I live on Cape Cod MA....you can see us sticking out into the Atlantic in that red zone. We usually dread the month of August...weeks of suffocating humid heat 90's not uncommon, with the air running 24/7 even tho we don't use it much at all, because we don't want to get acclimated to it. This year, we haven't turned it on once. In fact, July & August we've spent most nights sleeping under the light quilt. A couple of days of fans for air circulation, most days in clothing usually not seen until early fall.....

[@M31glow]

Excellent!

[@astrobalmer]

ive studied a few herbig ae/be stars in the context of their disks and growth professionally, and (completely qualitative statement here) the more isolated ones in the visible tend to have unique reflection nebulae hanging around, due to their young age and dynamics ex. there's a cute reflection nebulae around HD 142527 (not sure if that one is in an official reflection nebulae catalog). i bet if folks wanted to find their new deep sky objects, looking around more isolated herbig stars, that is, pre-main sequence targets (e.g. away from the galactic plane) would be much more fruitful than just a blind trawl through the sky

[@NebulaPhotos]

Thank you! This is a great tip. I'm excited to start looking more systematically. The little reflection nebula around HD142527 is catalogued, it's GN 15.53.3.02 - simbad.u-strasbg.fr/simbad/sim-id?Ident=GN%2015.53.3.02

[@xander1052]

Premiere was great :)

[@NebulaPhotos]

Thanks!

[@metinsaltik1651]

nice work thanks a lot.

[@Twobarpsi]

Great name!

[@masterxyr]

stellar video as always man! super congrats on your first cosmos object. When will you go and visit your discovery in person? Ps, what an odd choice of music for your piano practice

[@masterxyr]

to add that Southern Spain gets Bortles 2 which in western Europer is almost unheard of these days, at least continental-wise. The Moroccan desert, on the other hand, ha, bortle1s for days

[@SureshMsi]

Congratulations !!!

[@KingLoopie1]

Cool! If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck... It must be a duck! Or a hummingbird! Congrats! 👍👍

[@DVSx86]

Congratulations!

[@kToTheLToTheE]

congratulations!

[@yashrajshah7766]

l love the name of the nebula.

[@buddyguy4723]

What a catarization quagmire.

[@AstrowithEric]

Fantastic work Nico! Congratulations on the discovery of your nebula. This shows that persistence can totally pay off!

[@solidusseal]

Nice find :) Also is that thunder I hear on the background ?

[@NebulaLuna]

It's going to be a nice dark weekend. Are you planning on capturing anything?

[@NebulaPhotos]

I will be down in WV for an astrophotography event. If we get clear skies, I hope to jump back into Cepheus and work on wide field mosaics

[@tompage8674]

Great video! Was it hot when you recorded it? 😂

[@PJeBenn]

Congratulations that is really cool. I really need to get started with astrophotography. The only thing I have done so fare is Luner and Solar eclipse photography.

[@NebulaPhotos]

Those are a lot of fun. Deep sky astrophotography is my favorite, but also perhaps the most challenging type, esp. for the first year or two.

[@shrijan1334]

Hiiiii sir

[@philippefenain4405]

Amazing discovery ! Congratulations from France ! How incredible story it is and how smart you have been to remember that old photography to re-process it ! Simply remarquable ! By the way, great video !

[@BennyKleykens]

I've noticed the Polestar has a companion. Is that a discovery? (j/k) 😂😂

[@NebulaPhotos]

😂

[@kluisi2596]

Yeah, so what? … I have a star named after me. 😂

[@masterxyr]

Imaginative names you say? Well I for one think a lot of our fellow astronomers back in the day partook perhaps a little too enthusiastically in ayahuasca or the alike, as many of the stuff out there, and especially constelations, since even if I'm loaded (which I never am) with hallucinogenic I can't for the life of me 'see' most of it, ursa major (or minor) for that matter is one example I shall put forth, not that, of course, any of this is news to any one.

[@masterxyr]

my point also being, that your's is absolutely fine!

[@anata5127]

These findings are done from dark sky sites. No way, it could be done from bortle 5-9. Additionally, it is done with good scopes.

[@NebulaPhotos]

Ah, I should have mentioned. The LRGB data for the 2019 mosaic photo where I found the nebula was all done in a Bortle 6 area (Westford, MA). The followup (close-up release photo) was done under darker skies (Spain), but mostly because I wanted the reach of a big scope. So don't rule out light polluted areas, esp. with mono + LRGBSHO filters I think a lot of this kind of work is possible

[@anata5127]

@@NebulaPhotos You have mentioned mosaic but not bortle. Amazing, and how it looked so dim after 3h in Spain bortle 2 with huge telescope. It is at least 20 times more sensitive. Did you do 60h exposure for every frame in mosaic? I looked that list of discoveries in AstroBin. All of them 1-3 bortle, many huge scopes, and only one was bortle 5 with 100+ h exposure. So, your one is rather exception to a rule.

[@NebulaPhotos]

@@anata5127 it was a 2 panel mosaic with about 30 hours of data per panel at f/5. The follow up closeup photo is just 3 hours at f/8. I think many of those 100+ discoveries are by the same team, but also keep in mind the photos are the ones they are choosing to share to showcase the discovery. The discoveries were mostly actually found from the survey data, but could also be discovered in a light polluted sky by chance like I did.

[@anata5127]

@@NebulaPhotos Ok. Thanks for info. Still amazing.