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Monday, June 21, 2010

M17, the "Omega nebula"





M17, imaged with the Northern Galactic members remote telescope in Australia.
The Omega Nebula, also known as the Swan Nebula or the Horseshoe Nebula, cataloged as Messier 17 and NGC 6618.  This H-II region loactes in constellation Sagittarius. Distance from Earth is between 5000-6000 light years and it spans about 15 light years in diameter. Image area is 30'x30', about half a degree.
Open cluster of 35 hot young stars lies inside of the nebula and causes ionization glow of the elements.
The image is in HST-palette from the emission of ionized elements, R=Sulfur, G=Hydrogen and B=Oxygen



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.

The telescope and technical information:


16" RCOS ja Apogee U9000 camera. 
LRGB combo.
H-alpha 6x1200s, Dark and Flat calibrated.
O-III 1x1200s, Dark calibrated 
S-II 2x1200s, Dark calibrated
Raw data is shared with Petri Kehusmaa and J-P Metsavainio


Processing workflow:
Image acquisition, MaxiDL v4.xxx
Stacked and calibrated in CCDStack.
Deconvolution with a CCDSharp, 30 iterations
Levels, curves and color combine in PS CS3.
Seeing was not good at the time of imaging, FWHM 5"

100% crop from the image of M17




I made an experimental starless image to show the actual nebulous better.


M17 with a suppressed Stars.




Sunday, June 20, 2010

Helix nebula as a 3D Stereo pair




Parallel vision


Cross vision

Other 3D-formats can be found here:

Original 2D-image:

NOTE! This is a personal vision about forms and shapes, based on some known facts and an artistic impression.
Viewing instructions can be found from a Right hand side menu.


Helix nebula as an anaglyph Red/Cyan 3D


You'll need Red/Cyan Eyeglasses to be able to see this image right. 
Note, if you have a Red and Blue filters, you can use them! Red goes to Left eye.






Other 3D-formats can be found here:
Original 2D-image:

NOTE! This is a personal vision about forms and shapes, based on some known facts and an artistic impression.

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Helix nebula with some new photons added




Litle by litle the image gets deeper when more exposures gets added.
Previous version here:

The Helix nebula, NGC 7293. Planetary nebula in constellation Aquarius about 700 light years from the Earth..
(The helix has been often referred to as the "Eye of Good", 
I'll like to know, which one it's supposed  to belong... least we know now He/She has very large Blue eye(s).)

This is a start for an imaging project, since the Helix has lowish surface brightness, it'll need a long integration time. Now there is just One hour used for the Luminance channel and 10 min./each RGB-channel.
I think, about Five to ten hours is needed to reveal dimmer outer parts of this Planetary nebula.
Later we'll shoot all the narrow band channels, H-a, O-III and S-II, too. 

The telescope and technical information:

16" RCOS ja Apogee U9000 camera. 
LRGB combo.
Luminance 9x600s., Dark and Flat calibrated.
Red 5x600s, Dark calibrated 
Green 5x600s, Dark calibrated 
Blue 5x600s, Dark calibrated 
Raw data is shared with Petri Kehusmaa and J-P Metsavainio

Processing workflow:
Image acquisition, MaxiDL v4.xxx
Stacked and calibrated in CCDStack.
Deconvolution with a CCDSharp, 30 iterations
Levels, curves and color combine in PS CS3.