Tuesday, November 11, 2014
A furious cosmic horse gets blinded by a divine blue light
My latest photo, Sh2-132. I rarely give a name to my photos, other than the official catalog number or well known nickname, this time I couldn't resist to give a name of my own.
A furious cosmic horse gets blinded by a divine blue light
Sharpless 132 (Sh2-132) in Cepheus
A closeup composition
Why a furious horse?
A marble horse sculpture from Piazza Navona, Rome Italy, it's placed in the image to show the horse figure.
INFO
Sharpless 132 is a very faint emission nebula, it locates at the border of Cepheus and Lacerta. Distance is about 10.000 lightyears. My photo covers about one square degree of the sky (63x63"). The blue color in the image is from the emission of an ionized Oxygen (O-III). "The divine blue light" at horses face seems to be an Oxygen jet of some kind, or it's just a tens of light years long oddly shaped area of glowing gas. The shape can be seen in H-alpha channel too. (Ionized Hydrogen)
The actual nebula is much large, as can be seen in my older wide field photo of the area.
Area of interest is marked at my older wide field image of the Sh2-132. The original image from the Winter 2011, with technical details, can be found from HERE
A starless view
The actual nebula stands out nicely in this experimental starless version of my photo.
Technical details
Processing work flow
Image acquisition, MaxiDL v5.07.
Stacked and calibrated in CCDStack2.
Deconvolution with a CCDStack2 Positive Constraint, 33 iterations, added at 50% weight
Color combine in PS CS3
Levels and curves in PS CS3.
Imaging optics
Celestron Edge HD 1100 @ f7 with 0,7 focal reducer for Edge HD 1100 telescope
Cameras and filters
Imaging camera Apogee Alta U16 and Apogee seven slot filter wheel
Guider camera, Lodestar x2
Astrodon filter, 5nm H-alpha
Astrodon filter, 3nm O-III
Exposure times
H-alpha, 9 x 1200s = 3h
O-III, 3 x 1200s = 1h
S-II, 3x1200s = 1h
A single un cropped, calibrated and stretched 20 min. H-alpha frame
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