Sunday, December 9, 2012
The Cave Nebula
I shot this target 29.11. but I'm publishing it now since this one was very hard to process due to its dimness.
Cave Nebula, Sharpless 155 (Sh2-155)
In constellation Cepheus
Red=Sulfur, Green=Hydrogen and Blue=Oxygen.
The Cave Nebula, Sh2-155 or Caldwell 9, is a dim and very diffuse bright nebula within a larger nebula complex containing emission, reflection, and dark nebulosity. It is located in the constellation Cepheus. The reflection, wide band, component can't be seen in my image, since this is a narrowband one.
Distance is about 2400 light years.
Distance is about 2400 light years.
Orientation in a wide filed image
Area of interest is marked as a white rectangle. More info about this image HERE.
An apparent size of the full Moon is marked at the lower right corner for a scale.
Click for a large 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
15x 1200s exposures for the H-alpha, emission of ionized Hydrogen = 5h
Narrowband cahnnels for ionized Oxygen and Sulfur are taken from an older wide field image seen above.
Ps.
A single 20 min. H-alpha frame
Calibrated with Bias corrected flat and Dark masters in CCDStack
1200 seconds of H-aplha light with 12" SCT @ f5 and QHY9 astrocamera.
Image is scaled down 50% from original.
Friday, December 7, 2012
A quick one, Sh2-106
This is a kind of snapshot, only one hour of H-alpha filtered light. Sh2-106 is a compact star forming emission nebula in constellation Cygnus. I was planning to shot several hours of lights fro this onae in all three bands for a RGB-colors. How ever, this is a very small nebula and it needs a good seeing to work with. Seeing has been so poor up here, that I haven't been able to finalize this work. Maybe it'll work at next Autumn season....
Sharpless 106
In Cygnus, RA: 20h 30m 51.0s Dec: +37° 24' 35 Mag: 14.5, Distance: ~2000 ly
A colorized H-alpha emission image.
Sharpless 106 (Sh2-106) is a star forming region surrounded by dust and gasses in Cygnus. The central star is approximately 15 times the mass of our Sun and about 100,000 years old. Hourglass shape is coursed by a strong solar winds and material ejected from the star. The star is close to the bottom opening of the nebula in this image which glows the brightest. There are many sub-stellar objects forming within the nebula and may result in a cluster of 50 to 150 stars someday in future.
Technical details:
Processing work flow:
Image acquisition, MaxiDL v5.07.
Stacked and calibrated in CCDStack2.
Levels and curves 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
3 x 1200s exposures for the H-alpha, emission of ionized Hydrogen = 1h
From the bottom of my Soul
New imaging project, IC 1848, the Soul Nebula. This season I have worked with a longer focal length instrument, my old Meade LX200 12". This image shows a detail from a much large Nebula complex.
Soul Nebula detail
In constellation Cassiopeia
Image in Mapped colors, Red=S-II, Green=H-alpha and Blue=O-III
Click for a large image.
Soul Nebula (Sharpless 2-199, LBN 667) is emission nebulae in Cassiopeia at a distance of 7500 light years. The object is more commonly called by the cluster designation IC1848.
This complex is the eastern neighbor of IC1805 (Heart Nebula) and the two are often mentioned together as the "Heart and Soul".
Image in visual colors, combined from light emitted by the ionized elements, H-a, S-III and O-III
Click for a large image.
A mosaic
I have shot an other detail from this nebula complex back in 2009. This new and older detail are overlapping, so I was able to do a two frame mosaic out of them.
A two frame mosaic of the Soul Nebula in mapped colors.
Click for a large image.
Mosaic in visual colors.
Click for a large image.
Soul Nebula in wide field format
Area of interest is marked as a white rectangle. More info about this image HERE.
Click for a large image.
Image is showing both, the Heart and the Soul Nebulae. More info about this image in HERE.
Click for a large 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
24x 1200s exposures for the H-alpha, emission of ionized Hydrogen = 8h
Narrowband cahnnels for ionized Oxygen and Sulfur are taken from an older wide field image seen above.
Melotte 15, a closeup
I published the imaging project of Melotte 15 few days ago. This time I made a closeup images out of the same material.
The heart of the Heart, Mel 15
Image is in visual colors, combined from light emitted by the ionized elements, H-a, S-III and O-III
Click for a large image.
The interesting structure in the center of the image is a giant area of hydrogen gas that is caused to glow by the intense ultraviolet radiation from the massive stars of the Melotte 15 star cluster.
Dust and gas clouds are twisted by the pressure of the intense radiation, the solar wind.
This formation is estimated to be 7,500 light years away from Earth, North is up.
Image in Mapped colors, Red=S-II, Green=H-alpha and Blue=O-III
Click for a large image.
Orientation in IC 1805, the Heart Nebula
The area of interest is marked as a white rectangle.
A 100% closeup
Not a bad resolution for an old Meade LX200 12" telescope. Seeing wasn't very good at the time, FWHM varied between 3,5 to 4,5. A light, 50% weighted deconvolution was added to stacked image, it lowered the FWHM value down to ~2.9
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
45 x 1200s exposures for the H-alpha, emission of ionized Hydrogen = 15h
Narrowband cahnnels for ionized Oxygen and Sulfur are taken from an older wide field image seen above.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
