Astro Anarchy: planetary images

Showing posts with label planetary images. Show all posts

Saturday, January 4, 2025

New photo of NGC 281

This photo is made by combining 10 h of new H-alpha exposures to a 10 h of exposures with my older long focal length telescope from 2015. Beside that, there are 5 hours of data taken with Tokina AT-x 300mm f2.8 camera lens back in 2020. Very dim background mist comes mainly from camera lens data.
With 3 h S-II and O-III exposures the total exposure time was 31 hours.

Deep view to the NGC 281
Click for a full size, 2700x2500 pixels

A mapped color image from a light emitted by an ionized elements,

sulfur=red, hydrogen=green and oxygen=blue

A Portion of the Full Resolution Photo

I haven't noticed before that there is a triple star system at the star cluster IC 1590
The seeing wasn't very good so I couldn't quite split the two of the stars but it can be seen, that there are two stars very close to each other visually.

NGC 281 in visual palette

Click for a full size, 2700x2500 pixels

Visual color version of Sh2-115 glows mostly in red from a light emitted by an ionized elements,
sulfur=red, hydrogen=red and oxygen=blue, this combination is very close to a natural color palette.

SIAMESE FIGHTING FISH NEBULA

When I was processing the data for this photo I had a feeling that I have seen this shape and color combination before, soon it hit me, it was a picture of Siamese Fighting Fish

INFO

NGC 281 is a busy workshop of star formation. Prominent features include a small open cluster of stars, a diffuse red-glowing emission nebula, large lanes of obscuring gas and dust, and dense knots of dust and gas in which stars may still be forming. The open cluster of stars IC 1590 visible around the center has formed only in the last few million years. The brightest member of this cluster is actually a multiple-star system shining light that helps ionize the nebula's gas, causing the red glow visible throughout. The lanes of dust visible below the center are likely homes of future star formation. Particularly striking in the above photograph are the dark Bok globules visible against the bright nebula. Stars are surely forming there right now. The entire NGC 281 system lies about 10 thousand light years distant. (Source, NASA APOD)

With my new imaging system I can get deeper with a good resolution, than my old long focal length toolset was able to. The secondary mirror focusing system takes care of focusing and temperature compensation, I can keep the heavy main mirror locked down all the time. Heavy mirror has a tendency to move a bit when the scope moves and that can mess up the collimation.
The current system keeps collimation perfect all the time.

An other great accessory is the Active Optics Unit from Starlight Xpress. It's as easy to use as any OAG, the good update speed to a 11 mag star is around 8Hz. The AO-unit removes all the minor tracking errors very fast. The Mesu Mount Mark II has a periodic error under four arcseconds and that's a very small error, even so, AO unit gives a better image quality since the corrections are made by moving a light weight piece of glass, the heavy load of the scope and accessories doesn't need to move for corrections.

Structure study of the NGC 281

Pillar like formations in the gas cloud are forming when the radiation pressure (Solar Wind) from the open cluster IC 1590 blows the gas and dust away and coursing some parts of the gas collapse.Due to that, they all are pointing to the source of the solar wind, open cluster IC 1590, as I have shown in the image above.

NGC 281 in a large context
Please, click for a large image

NGC 281 can be seen in this wide field mosaic image of the constellation Cassiopeia at bottom center.

This photo is also a small part of a massive mosaic image of the Northern Milky Way Galaxy.

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 31h

H-alpha, 30 x 1200 s, binned 1x1 = 10 h (14" Celestron EDGE)
H-alpha, 30 x 1200 s, binned 1x1 = 10 h (11" Celestron EDGE, shot at 2015)
H-alpha, 15 x 1200 x, binned 1x1 = 5h (Tokina AT-x 300mm f2.8, shot at 2020)

O-III,9x 1200 s, binned 2x2 = 3h (11" Celestron EDGE, shot at 2015)

S-II, 9 x 1200 s. binned 2x2 = 3h (11" Celestron EDGE, shot at 2015)

A single calibrated 20 min exposure of H-alpha, Bin 1x1

Click for a full size image.