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Thursday, November 28, 2024

Beauty and the Beast, Tulip Nebula and a Black Hole

I started to collect exposures for this photo back in 2014, now I have shot new high resolution material for this amazing target with my new imaging platform. 

I see several layers in my photos and that makes them to tell a story beyond any imagination.

First

A visual layer, that's naturally very important to me as a visual artist, revealing the hidden cosmic beauty and poetry is my passion.

Second 

The physical layer, how emission of the nebulae works, radiation pressure, nuclear fusion of the star, gravitational phenomes, etc... all that is extremely beautiful in its own class.

Third 

An existential layer, where we are coming and where we are going in a cosmic scale.
Practically all of the heavier elements in our bodies are coming from supernova explosion's, iron in our blood, oxygen, carbon, etc... We are children of the stars
When our Sun will die after few billion years and turn to a planetary nebula, it'll vaporize the Earth and our remains on it and blows them to the outer space. After aeons our remains are going to end up to a building blocks for a new generation of stars.
We all have been stars and one day we going to be stars again.

This is the beauty and poetry I'm after my photos


BEAUTY AND THE BEAST

Tulip Nebula and a Black Hole 
Click the photo to see a high resolution photo, it's worth it 

A two frame mosaic from a light emitted by an ionized elements,
sulfur=red, hydrogen=green and oxygen=blue


One frame


Black Hole Cygnus X-1
Click the photo to see a high resolution photo, it's worth it 


Black Hole, Cygnus X-1, is marked in the photo


INFO

The complex and beautiful Tulip Nebula, Sharpless 101,  blossoms about 8,000 light-years away toward the constellation of Cygnus the Swan. Ultraviolet radiation from young energetic stars ionizes the atoms and powers the emission from the Tulip Nebula.  

Also in the featured field of view is the black hole Cygnus X-1, which is also a microquasar because it is one of strongest X-ray sources in planet Earth's sky. The powerful jets from the black hole can't be seen in this photo since they glow light in X-ray wave length. Faint bluish curved shock front, visible at up center, is coursed by the X-ray jet when it hits to a interstellar gas and dust. 

Why we can see the black hole in this image as a star like object?

We can't see the actual black hole but we can see how the material is twirling in the black hole. The speed become so high that the matter starts to turn to an energy emitting light trough the whole spectrum up to X-ray and gamma radiation. 


Photo in Visual Colors
Click the photo to see a high resolution photo, it's worth it 

A two frame mosaic from a light emitted by an ionized elements,
sulfur=red, hydrogen=red and oxygen=blue

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 20h
H-alpha, 15 x 1200 s, binned 1x1 = 10 h
O-III, 45x 1200 s, binned 1x1 = 5 h 
S-II, 9 x 1200 s. binned 2x2 = 5h


A single, full scale, 20 min H-alpha exposure, Bin 1x1
 Click for a full scale image.



A single, full scale, 20 min S-III exposure, Bin 2x2
 Click for a full scale image.



A single, full scale, 20 min O-III exposure, Bin 1x1
 Click for a full scale image.







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