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Friday, February 4, 2011

A Planetary Nebula poster



Note! There is now a Gray circle, size of the full Moon, as a scale.

I made this poster to show and understand relative sizes of the nebulae. All Planetary Nebulae in this image are in same scale. Each individual image covers an area of 20' horizontally. (~0,3 degrees) and
they are in "natural" colors, mixed from the narrowband channels. By a following method:
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.
I have made a similar poster out of supernova remnants as well, you can see it from here:http://astroanarchy.blogspot.com/2011/02/supernova-remnant-poster.html


All images, expect NGC 6302 (Bug Nebula), are shot from my urban observatory in very centrum of city Oulu. NGC 6302 was shot with a remote telescope, 16" RCOS,  from Australia.

All of the images are Planetary Nebulae.
Planetary nebulae are shells of gas, shed by stars late in their life cycles after using up all of their nuclear fuel. The gas is illuminated and ionized by its extremely hot central star, a core left from the original star.
Our own star, the Sun, is expected to undergo the same process in a couple of billion years.


Images, from top Left to a bottom Right
Click thumbnails for large images, technical data behind links 


M27, the "Dumbbell Nebula":








M76, the "Little Dumbbell Nebula":

4 comments:

Kate Ebneter said...

This is really cool, but it would really interesting to scale them by physical rather than apparent size. Have you thought of doing that?

heidi alene said...

can one purchase these posters?

Anonymous said...

So is this poster available for purchase somewhere, or is it not that kind of poster?

J-P Metsavainio said...

Thanks Kate!
Good idea, the physical size is usually mentioned in the text, with an image. I might do a version with an estimated physical scale.

Heidi and Anonymous,
I have a portfolio, http://astroanarchy.zenfolio.com/
You can buy any image as a photographic print, under a folder "My Best Images". Prices are at "nonprofit" level.