Friday, February 26, 2010
Rosette Nebula closeup
Rosette Nebula & a star cluster NGC 2239
Nebula in HST-palette, Red=S-II, Green=H-a and Blue=O-III
Last two nights I used for the Rosette nebula, weather gets cloudy after the midnight at both evenings.
I was positively surprised about the image quality since Rosette Nebula doesn't raise very high up here North, the maximum elevation is about 30 degrees, seeing and transparency were both lousy too.
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 @ 9Hz
Image Scale, 0,75 arcseconds/pixel
Exposures
H-alpha 13x1200s, binned 1x1
Note.
Other channels are from a wide field image from 2009:
The original image can be found HERE
O-III 3x5min and S-II 3x5min with a Canon FD 200mm f1.8 @ f1.8
Wide field image of the Rosette Nebula in HST-palette
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Planetary Nebula, PK 164+31.1, finalized
Jones-Emberson 1
Nebula in natural color. Narrowband channels are mixed to match visible spectrum. Red=80% H-alpha+20% S-II, Green=O-III and Blue=80% O-III+20% H-alpha to compensate otherwise missing H-beta.
The tiny Blue central star is a white dwarf, the intense ultraviolet light emitted by this star makes elements in a ring glow. Ionized Hydrogen emits red light and the ionized Oxygen blue one.
Why the name "PK 164+31.1"?
PK comes from the names of Czechoslovakian astronomers Perek and Kouhutec. 1967 they created an extensive catalog of all of the known planetary nebulae in 1964. The number indicates the position in the sky. The alternative name "Jones-Emberson 1" is after its discoveres.
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 @ 9Hz
Image Scale, 1,5 arcseconds/pixel
Exposures
H-alpha 32x1200s, binned 2x2 and 7x1200s, binned 3x3 = 13h
O-III 2x600s, binned 4x4 and 1x1200s, binned 4x4
S-II 3x600s, binned 4x4 and 1x1200s, binned 4x4
PK 164+31.1 as an animated 3D
In this blog, there is lots of experimental material. To see my actual astroimages, please, see my Portfolio: http://astroanarchy.zenfolio.com/
Animations are made by creating artificial parallax to an image. Then two images are animated together by using conversion web service, Start3D. There can be some artifacts in images, due the experimental nature of this work! The volumetric models are based on some known facts and an artistic impression.
Please, let the images load for few seconds to see them animated!
Original Image with details can be found HERE
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
IC 443 finalized
A cosmic A-Bomb
I named this image of IC 443 to a "Cosmic A-Bomb" since it looks like a gigant explosion. In fact, it is a remnant of a gigant nuclear explosion, Supernova.
Nebula in natural color. Narrowband channels are mixed to match visible spectrum. Red=80% H-alpha+20% S-II, Green=O-III and Blue=80% O-III+20% H-alpha to compensate otherwise missing H-beta.
Nebula in HST-palette, Red=S-II, Green=H-a and Blue=O-III
Generally this was on of the moust difficult object to shot in longer focal lenght. Surface brightness is very low and there is extremely faint nebulosity around a main object. I wanted to show it and a detailed filaments of the supernova remnant main body. The actual remnant is much large, than my limited field of view can show.
An older wide field image of the IC 443 from a Spring season 2009.
Exposures:
-H-alpha 8x1200s binned 1x1
-S-II 4x600s binned 2x2
-O-III 5x600s binned 2x2
Optics: Tokina 300mm TX f2.8 @ f2.8
Camera: QHY9 @ -50 C
Guiding: Lx200 GPS 12" + LQHY5 and PHD-Guiding
I think, this was as hard object as a Sh2-240 (Simeis 147), Supernova remnant in Taurus. I shot it in last Spring season; http://astroanarchy.blogspot.com/2009/01/sh2-240-more-lights.html
I found out, that color, in my older wide field image, is very usable for this new closeup version! There is not much details in very dim O-III and S-II channels- I use a method of mine, Tone Mapping, to make a color composition from images with a very different scale. It works just fine!
H-alpha channel after a Eleven hours of exposures.
Technical details:
Telescope, Meade LX200 GPS 12" @ f5
Camera, QHY9
Guiding, SXV-AO @ 7Hz
Image Scale, 0,75 arcseconds/pixel
-
Exposures:
H-alpha 18x1200s, binned 1x1 + 14 x 1200s, binned 2x2, Flats. Bias and Darks
Total exposuretime for H-alpha is about eleven hours.
Note, colors in this image are shot with a different optical configuration, back in Spring 2009, details are in a text above.
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