IC 2177 is an HII complex lying on the border of Monoceros and Canis Major. Covering over 3 degrees of sky, this beautiful nebula lies in one of the farthest arms of our Milky Way galaxy and is about 100 light years across.

The designation IC 2177 refers to the nebulosity spread across the wings of the Seagull. The head of the Seagull is Vdb 93, while the bright HII region at the bottom wing is Cedarblad 90. Also contained within the nebula are several open clusters - NGC 2343, NGC 2335, Collinder 465, and Collinder 466.

In this image, North is up.

Exposure Details
Lens	Canon EF 200mm f/2.8L II USM
Focal Length	200mm
Focal Ratio	f/3.5
Mount	Schaefer GEM - 7 1/2 inch Byers gear
Guiding	ONAG On-Axis Guider, Lodestar autoguider, PHD Guiding
Camera	MonoMods Monochrome Canon 450D by Luis Campos and Gary Honis modified Canon 450D (Baader mod)
Exposure	164 subs of 600 sec @ ISO 1600 (27 1/3 hours) using Astronomik 6nm Ha clip filter
Calibration	30 darks, 30 flats, 30 flat darks, 30 bias
Date	December 5, 8, 30, and 31, 2013; January 20, 2014
Temperature	12/5-25F, 12/8-27F, 12/30-46F, 12/31-50F, 1/20-48F
SQM Reading	Bortle 4 on all 5 nights - 12/5-21.15, 12/8-20.95, 12/30-21.30, 12/31-21.50, 1/20-21.20
Seeing	12/5 and 12/8 and 1/20 - 3/5, 12/30 and 12/31 - 4/5
Location	Pine Mountain Club, California
Software Used	Images Plus 5.75 for camera control, calibration, stacking, digital development, feature mask, smoothing and noise reduction, and multiresolution sharpening. Photoshop CS5 used for levels and curves, high pass filter, screen mask invert, and unsharp mask. Gradient Xterminator for gradient removal. Focus Magic for focus restoration. Registar for stack alignment and registration.
Notes	This is my first light image with my new monochrome Canon 450D. I had started imaging this object with 10 hours of data from my color camera, but ended up finishing the data with another 17 hours from the monochrome camera. Because the monochrome camera provides much sharper detail than the color camera, I used some special techniques to use the data from the color camera data to only blend in the faint parts of the nebula, and allowed the mono camera data for the main image. The result was that I was able to reduce the noise in the fainter areas, while retaining all the superb detail from the monochrome camera. The new camera seems to work extremely well for gathering narrowband data, and I expect it to be a very useful piece of equipment to complement my other camera.