Friday, November 16, 2012
Astro Anarchy gets published
Winner image of the Cloudy Nights forum Imaging/Sketching Contest
October 2012
IC 1340, Part of the Eastern Veil Nebula in Cygnus
RA: 20h56m 45.8s DE:+31 degrees07' 17"
Original blog post about this image, with more images and technical details:
Thursday, November 15, 2012
Tuesday, November 13, 2012
Pickering's Triangle, project finalized
The Pickering's Triangle
A detail of the Veil Nebula supernova remnant
Image is in mapped colors, from the emission of ionized elements, R=Sulfur, G=Hydrogen and B=Oxygen.
This combination is generally called to HST-palette. It's used originally by the Hubble Space Telescope.
I managed to shoot enough data for the S-II channel, to build a three channel color image, last night.
It was very windy and i had hard time with guiding. There was some serious technical difficulties with my gears. After spending ten busy hours up in the observatory, I had only four 20 min. S-II frames, duh...
Pickering's Triangle, Simeis 3-188, is a small part of the Veil Nebula supernova remnant in constellation Cygnus.
Veil Nebula is a cloud of ionized gas and dust, leftovers from an exploded star. The star went off some 5000-8000 years ago at distance of about 1470 light years. This, relatively faint target, is difficult to image due to the large angular diameter, about three degrees, and a dense star field.
Orientation
Area of interest is marked as a white rectangle, the apparent size of the Moon can be seen at lower right corner.
Image in natural colors
R=Hydrogen + Sulfur, G=Oxygen and B=Oxygen + Hydrogen.
Technical details:
Processing work flow:
Image acquisition, MaxiDL v5.07.
Stacked and calibrated in CCDStack2.
Levels, curves and color combine in PS CS3.
Optics, Meade LX200 GPS 12" @ f5
Camera, QHY9
Guiding, SXV-AO, an active optics unit, and Lodestar guide camera 8Hz
Image Scale, ~0,8 arc-seconds/pixel
15 x 1200s exposures for the H-alpha, emission of ionized Hydrogen = 5h
9 x 1200s exposures for the O-III, emission of ionized Oxygen = 3h
4x1200s exposures for the S-II, emission of ionized Sulfur = 1h 20min.
Ps.
An animation, stars vs. starless
Sometimes I'm publishing starless versions of my images. The actual nebula stands out better by this way, since human brains has a habit to form false shapes from a group of random dots, like stars.
Friday, November 9, 2012
Pickering's Triangle in Ha/OIII light
A somehow clear night for a long time!
Last night I was able to shoot O-III light (Light emitted by ionized oxygen.) for my latest project, the Pickering's Triangle in the Veil Nebula. I manged to collect three hours of O-III light, ones again clouds ruined about two hours of exposures. I'll shoot the S-II channel (Light emitted by ionized Sulfur.), as soon as the weather supports, for a three channel color image.
The Pickering's Triangle
A detail in the Veil Nebula supernova remnant
Two color image from H-a and O-III, image is in natural colors from narrowband channels. Emission of hydrogen can be seen as Red and emission of oxygen as Blue.
Pickering's Triangle is a small part of the Veil Nebula supernova remnant in constellation Cygnus.
Veil Nebula is a cloud of ionized gas and dust, leftovers from an exploded star. The star went off some 5000-8000 years ago at distance of about 1470 light years. This, relatively faint target, is difficult to image due to the large angular diameter, about three degrees, and a dense star field.
Orientation
Area of interest is marked as a white rectangle, the apparent size of the Moon can be seen at lower right corner.
An animated image
Red = Hydrogen, Blue = Oxygen. The last image shows channels combined.
An experimental starless image
Technical details:
Processing work flow:
Image acquisition, MaxiDL v5.07.
Stacked and calibrated in CCDStack2.
Levels, curves and color combine in PS CS3.
Optics, Meade LX200 GPS 12" @ f5
Camera, QHY9
Guiding, SXV-AO, an active optics unit, and Lodestar guide camera 8Hz
Image Scale, ~0,8 arc-seconds/pixel
15 x 1200s exposures for H-alpha emission = 5h
9 x 1200s exposures for O-III, emission of ionized oxygen = 3h
Ps.
This is my second Veil Nebula detail from this Autumn season. Previous photograph, IC 1340, can be seen here: http://www.astroanarchy.blogspot.fi/2012/10/ic-1340-project-finalized.html
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