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Monday, October 19, 2009

Cat's Eye Nebula

















In Natural Colors and In HST-palette

Uh, this was difficult.
Outer shell is very dim and the core of the Nebula is so bright, balancing that is not an easy task.
I'm happy with this result!
The core of the Cat's Eye Nebula has a small angular diameter, so good seeing is needed to reveal any internal details. I managesd to get some visible by using seceral relatively short exposures, 150s. each, for the core. Seeing varys between 3-2,2 FWHM.
There is a hint of cocentric circles visible around the core, ,they are real phenomen coused by polarized light from the nebula.

Gropped center from the image above.
They are very well seen in Hubble's image of the Cat's Eye Nebula HERE:
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Two color chemes, HST Palette as S-II=Red, H-a=Green and O-III=Blue. Second image is in natural colors composed from narrowband data. Channels are balanced so, that image match to visible spectrum, H-a + 24%S-II=Red, O-III=Green and O-III + 15%H-alpha=Blue. - 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. Mild wavelets to the core with RegiStax5 - -Telescope, Meade LX200 GPS 12" @ f4.65 Camera, QHY9 Guiding, SXV-AO @ 11Hz Image Scale, 0,8 arcseconds/pixel Exposures: H-alpha 9x1200s Binned 1x1 + 22x300s Binned 1x1 for the Core O-III 12x1200s, binned 1x1 + 15x150s Binned 1x1 for the Core S-II 4x600s, binned 1x1
- Total Exposure time is 10 hours.

Thursday, October 15, 2009

The Tulip Nebula as a Stereogram

Parallel, Natural Colors Cross, Natural Colors
Parallel Vision, HST-palette Cross Vision , HST-palette

NOTE! This is a personal vision about forms and shapes, based on some known facts and artistic impression. Wieving instructions can be found from a Right hand side menu. - Original Image with details can be found HERE.

A new project, The Cat's Eye Nebula

At the same night, when I finalized the Tulip Nebula, I took first frames for my next target.
Cat's Eye nebula is a small, complex structured, Planetary nebula in constellation Drago.
In this first version, only H-alpha light is exposed. There is strong O-III component in its halo.
Doe its small angular size, good seeing is needed to show any internal details in nebula's core.
Seeing was really bad and I just tryed to capture H-a for outer halo.
However, there was some details in bright core as well.
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Details; -Camera, QHY9 - Optics, Meade LX200 GPS 12" @ f4.65 - Guiding, Lodestar and SXV-AO @ 8Hz - Exposures, 10x600s and 4x1200s with 7nm H-alpha filter.
- image scale is 0.8 arcsecond/pixel
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A "pre Stereogram"

Parallel

Cross

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Tulip Nebula Finalized





Last night I got more H-alpha light and O-III and S-II channels.
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Two color chemes, HST Palette as S-II=Red, H-a=Green and O-III=Blue. Second image is in natural colors composed from narrowband data. Channels are balanced so, that image match to visible spectrum, H-a + 24%S-II=Red, O-III=Green and O-III + 15%H-alpha=Blue.
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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" @ f4.65 Camera, QHY9
Guiding, SXV-AO @ 11Hz
Exposures: H-alpha 10x1200s Binned 1x1
O-III 6x600s, binned 3x3
S-II 4x600s, binned 3x3
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The name "Tulip" is well deserved.