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Wednesday, February 16, 2011

IC 1848, the "Soul Nebula", finalized





IC 1848, the "Soul Nebula"
Ra 02h 51m 36.24s Dec +60° 26′ 53.9"



Image is in HST-palette, (HST=Hubble Space Telescope)
from the emission of ionized elements, R=Sulfur, G=Hydrogen and B=Oxygen.
Star colors are mixed from the NB channels, Red=H-a, G=O-III and B= 85%O-III + 15%H-a.

This is a final version of IC 1848. I shot more H-alpha, 15 x 20min., since the first set was ruined by the orthogonality problem between the optical path and CCD. Now all stars are pinpoints at a whole field of view.

Soul Nebula, (Sh2-199, LBN 667) is an emission nebula in constellation Cassiopeia. IC 1848 is a cluster inside Soul Nebula. Distance is about 7.500 light years. This complex is a Eastern neighbor of IC 1805, the "Heart Nebula" and they are often mentioned together as Heart and Soul.


Natural color composition from the emission of ionized elements, R=80%Hydrogen+20%Sulfur, G=100%Oxygen and B=85%Oxygen+15%Hydrogen to compensate otherwise missing H-beta emission. This composition is very close to a visual spectrum.

A closeup

Not a bad resolution for a 300mm camera lens.


Processing work flow:
Image acquisition, MaxiDL v5.07.
Stacked and calibrated in CCDStack. 
Deconvolution with a CCDSharp, 20 iteration, added at 50% weight.
Levels, curves and color combine in PS CS3.

Equipments:
Tokina AT-a 300mm f2.8 @ f2.8
Platform and guiding, Meade LX200 GPS 12" @ f5
Camera, QHY9
Guider, Lodestar
Image Scale, 3,79 arcseconds/pixel

Exposures:
Baader H-alpha 7nm 15x1200s, binned 1x1
Other channels are from an older image



Older images from the same target


Image shows both, Soul and Heart, nebulae
Colors for a new image are taken from this older one.






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