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Tuesday, October 29, 2024

Methuselah Nebula, MWP1, project finalized

Planetary Nebulae are like candy of the cosmos, small and colorful treats to the eye.
MWP1 is a Planetary Nebula in constellation Cygnus, the Swan, it's rarely imaged and now I know why.

This is a unusually old, unusually shaped and unusually large planetary nebula, it also was one of the most difficult targets I have captured so far.

When I saw the first  20 min. exposure, it looked like there is plenty of nothing in the frame, this is dim to an extreme.  I have added full size 20 min sub frames of H-alpha and O-III at the end of this blog post so you can see yourself how much data there is. 


MWP1, Methuselah Nebula
Click for a full size image

Photo is in natural color palette from the light emitted by an ionized hydrogen (H-alpha) 
and an ionized oxygen (O-III)




MWP1 in O-III light only
Click for a full size image

The structure of MWP1 in light of an ionized oxygen (O-III)



INFO

More or less symmetric planetary nebula cataloged as MWP1 lies some 4,500 light-years away in the northern constellation Cygnus the Swan. 

This is one of the largest planetary nebulae known, it spans about 15 light-years. Based on its expansion rate the nebula has an age of 150 thousand years, a cosmic blink of an eye in the 10 billion year life of a sun-like star. But planetary nebulae represent a very brief final phase in stellar evolution, as the nebula's central star shrugs off its outer layers to become a hot white dwarf. In fact, planetary nebulae ordinarily only last for 10 to 20 thousand years. 

The central star of the nebula is on of the hottest stars known. It's so hot that it's producing large amounts of X-rays

Source NASA APOD


Scale in the Sky

The white circle show the apparent size of the Moon in the same scale, this is a large object as a Planetary nebula. Moon has a angular dimension of 30 arcminutes, that's 0.5 degrees. 




Animation

I made this small animation to show the difference between two emission lines, H-a and O-III



Technical details

Processing workflow

Image acquisition, MaximDL
Stacked and calibrated in CCDStack2.
Deconvolution with a CCDStack2, Positive Constraint, 27 iterations, added at 50% weight
Color combine in PS CS3
Levels and curves in PS CS3.

Imaging optics, Celestron EDGE 14" with 0.7 Focal reducer

Mount, MesuMount Mark II

Cameras, Imaging camera Apogee Alta U9000M and Apogee seven slot filter wheel
Guider camera, Lodestar x 2 and SXV-AO Active Optics @ 5hz

filters, Astrodon 5nm H-alpha and 3nm O-III

Total exposure time 24h
H-alpha, 21 x 1200 s, binned 1x1 = 8 h
O-III, 48x 1200 s, binned 1x1 = 16h 



A single, full size, 20 min H-alpha and O-III exposure
 Click for a full scale image.

Both images below are jpg photos of a single full size, 20 min. FIT-format 16 bit image. 
Photos are calibrated with darks and bias corrected flats and are heavily stretched to show even a hint of the actual nebula.

H-alpha




O-III








Sunday, October 20, 2024

A start of the new imaging project, MWP1, the Methuselah Nebula

MWP1 ( Motch-Werner-Pakull 1, PN G080.3-10.4, PK 080-10.1) is a very old, dim and diffused planetary nebula in constellation Cygnus, the Swan. It's one of the largest planetary nebula known, it spans about 15 light years of space. The apparent size in the sky is 15.52 x 13,13 arcminutes. (Full moon has a diameter of 30 arcminutes) The estimated age of the nebula is 150.000 years.  

MWP1 is a very usually shaped, unusually large, and unusually old, planetary nebulae. The progenitor star is also one of the hottest stars known, so hot it is producing large amounts of X-rays. There are not very many photos out of this difficult target. 

This is a start of the imaging project with my new imaging system. So far I have shot 15 hours of  light from an ionized oxygen, O-III.  I'll shoot two other emission lines, H-alpha and S-II, when ever the weather allows it. The triple ionized oxygen emits blueish light, in this image the O-III emission is colorized to blue. I can produce a real three band color image after I have collected enough light for ionized hydrogen and sulfur. 


MWP1, the Methuselah Nebula
Click for a large image

MWP1 planetary nebula in light of an ionized oxygen only.




Technical details

Processing workflow

Image acquisition, MaximDL v5.07.
Stacked and calibrated in CCDStack2.
Deconvolution with a CCDStack2 Positive Constraint, 27 iterations, added at 50% weight
Color combine in PS CS3
Levels and curves in PS CS3.

Imaging optics, Celestron EDGE 14" with 0.7 Focal reducer

Mount, MesuMount Mark II

Cameras, Imaging camera Apogee Alta U9000M and Apogee seven slot filter wheel
Guider camera, Lodestar x 2 and SXV-AO Active Optics @ 5hz

filters, Astrodon 3nm O-III

Total exposure time
O-III, 45x 1200 s, binned 1x1 = 15h 



A single full scale 20 min O-III exposure
 Click for a full scale image.

MWP1 is a really dim target, a single 20 O-III exposure doesn't show much of it. The photo is calibrated with a bias corrected flat frame and dark frame.


Friday, October 18, 2024

NOCTURNE EXIHIBITION

 First exhibition for a while, this time in my home town Oulu.
A new Art Gallery, AudioGalleria, has it's second exhibition build around my photos. 

The exhibition starts at Saturday19.10 with opening party at 18.00 - 20.00, you all are welcome to enjoy my cosmic nature photographs and complimentary sparkling wine!



Ps.

At Fathers day, Sunday 10.11 at 16.00 I will give a public presentation about my work in Valvesali at down town Oulu. All fathers and other guests are welcome.
After the dry lecture we serve complimentary sparkling wine in nearby AudioGalleria.


Tuesday, October 15, 2024

WR 134, The Rising Phoenix

This is the second light for my new imaging setup, the first light image can be seen HERE

For years I have wanted to shoot a long focal length photo of this amazing mass ejecting star in constellation Cygnus, the Swan. Past five years I have done short focal length imaging with camera optics, now it's time to get closer.

I spent several clear nights to capture light emitted by an ionized elements in this gas formation. (H-alpha, S-II and O-III) For compositional reasons I ended up to a two panel mosaic image. Total exposure time is 23h.

When processing the final image I couldn't be noticing how much this formation looked like a mystical creature, the Phoenix Bird.  I rarely use any other than official catalog numbers as a name of my photos but this time I simply had to name this composition to "Rising Phoenix". 

When art meets science, the results can be beautiful. It can become something more than either of them on their own can ever be.


WR 134 as a Rising Phoenix
Click for a large image, 2500x1300 pixels photo shows the WR 134 like never seen before.

The photo is in mapped colors from an ionized elements, H-alpha=green, S-II=red and O-III=blue, Original resolution is 12.000 x 7000 pixels




A Closer Look
Click for a large image







RISING PHOENIX PAREIDOLIA
Click for a large image

This image shows how I see the Phoenix Bird in this image


Info about the WR 134

WR 134 is a variable Wolf-Rayet star located around 6,000 light years away from us in the constellation of Cygnus. It's surrounded by a faint bubble of glowing ionized oxygen, blown out by the intense radiation and fast solar wind from the star. The star has five times the radius of the sun and it's 400,000 times more luminous.


My Wide Field Photo of the Area

Click for a large image, ~2500x2000 pixels

WR 134 can be seen just up left from the center, at right from the middle lays the Tulip Nebula, 
Sh2-101. I took this narrowband  photo with Tokina AT-X 300mm f2.8 camera lens @ full open. 
The camera was a Apogee Alta U16 with an Astrodon narrowband filter set, exposure time around 10h. This is a one frame image. Note, the "noise" in the background is not a noise, there are millions of stars
This photo is a part of very large mosaic image, 
can you find the WR 134 from THIS massive panorama of Northern Milky Way



WR 134, the Rising Phoenix in visual spectrum
Click for a large image, ~2500x1300 pixels

The photo is in visual colors from an ionized elements, H-alpha=red, S-II=red and O-III=blue





A Starless Image of WR 134 Animated
Click for a large image

I made this small animation to show some interesting structures in the gas clouds, they are maybe hints about some earlier outbursts of the star. There are also two almost parallel straight line like structures. The one just under the bubble can be seen in H-alpha light. The second, much dimmer one, locates just right from the red line and can be seen only in O-III light.



An Animation about emission layers
Click for a large image

In this animation the blue O-III channel can be seen alone without other two emission lines in image,  H-alpha and S-II, and in a last frame, without other stars but WR134 visible




Technical details

Processing workflow

Image acquisition, MaximDL v5.07.
Stacked and calibrated in CCDStack2.
Deconvolution with a CCDStack2 Positive Constraint, 27 iterations, added at 50% weight
Color combine in PS CS3
Levels and curves in PS CS3.

Imaging optics, Celestron EDGE 14" with 0.7 Focal reducer

Mount, MesuMount Mark II

Cameras, Imaging camera Apogee Alta U9000M and Apogee seven slot filter wheel
Guider camera, Lodestar x 2 and SXV-AO Active Optics @ 5hz

filters, Astrodon 5nm H-alpha, 3nm S-II and 3nm O-III

Total exposure time 23h
H-alpha, 15 x 1200 s, binned 1x1 = 5 h
O-III, 45x 1200 s, binned 1x1 = 15h 
S-II, 9 x 1200 s. binned 2x2 = 3h


A single, full scale, 20 min O-III exposure
 Click for a full scale image.

This is a dim target, 1200s O-III exposure doesn't show much about the O-III formation around the star WR 134.

This is one of the test shots after the collimation procedure. Exposure time is 1200s with 3nm O-III filter. Image is calibrated with Dark Frame and Bias corrected Flat Frame. Target is WR 134 in Cygnus. Stars are pinpoint from corner to corner. Optical analysis of this frame can be found at end of THIS blogpost


PS,


Terminator Arrives from the Future
My wife saw the new photo and pointed out, that the blue formation looks like an electric bubble used for a time traveling, as seen in a Terminator movies.





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