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Sunday, March 7, 2010

M1, the "Crab nebula"


Nebula in natural color, composed from two narrowband channel, O-III & H-alpha.
This is a difficult target up here in North, due the smallish angular size and the low maximum elevation.
I shot final O-III frames when target was only about 20 degreen above horizont.
Seeing was better than few nights ago but not as good as I was hoping.
The Crab Nebula supernova remnant locates in constellation Taurus. The actual, bright, supernova was seen by Chinese and Arab astronomers in 1054.
Distance from Earth is about 6500 light years and diameter of the nebula is about 11 light years. Supernova remnant expands at a rate of about 1500 kilometers/second.
Processing work flow:
Image acquisition, MaxiDL v5.07.
Stacked and calibrated in CCDStack.
Deconvolution with a CCDSharp, 30 iterations.
Levels, curves and color combine in PS CS3.

Telescope, Meade LX200 GPS 12" @ f5
Camera, QHY9 Guiding, SXV-AO @ 3Hz
Image Scale, 0,75 arcseconds/pixel
Exposures H-alpha 15x1200s, binned 1x1
O-III 2x1200s binned 2x2
I'll shoot the S-II channel and more O-III later, when weather let me do so.

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