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All the material on this website is copyrighted to J-P Metsavainio, if not otherwise stated. Any content on this website may not be reproduced without the author’s permission.

Have a visit in my portfolio

Sunday, September 19, 2010

NGC 7000 as an anaglyph 3D, second edition



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 and details:
 
 
NOTE! This 3D-study is a personal vision about forms and shapes, based on some known facts and an artistic impression.

Saturday, September 18, 2010

NGC 7000, the "North America" nebula reprocessed



I did this one again. I carried away with processing of the first version in previous post.
I never should do processing after a sleepless night of imaging!

NOTE. Less compressed images in my portfolio:
(Google blog compress images a lot and coursing artifacts.) 


Close up of the NGC 7000, the "North America" nebula.
Image is composed from O-III and H-a narrowband channels to a bi-color image.
This palette is close to a visiblel spectrum.
I'll shoot more O-III and S-II for this, to build a HST-palette image, later.


An experimental starless image. Stars are removed in one processing step and placed back with zero data lost. Sometimes I publish an image with a reduced stars to show the actual nebula better. It looks kind of nice, or spooky, that's a matter of taste.

A wide field image of NGC 7000 complex, the area of interest is marked with a gray border.


Closeup

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 @ 6Hz 
Image Scale, 0,75 arcseconds/pixel 
Exposures H-alpha 15x1200s, binned 1x1=5h
O-III 1x1200s binned 3x3


Friday, September 17, 2010

NGC 7000, the "North America" nebula closeup, second round





Close up of the NGC 7000, the "North America" nebula.
Image is composed from O-III and H-a narrowband channels to a bi-color image.
This palette is close to a visiblel spectrum.
I'll shoot more O-III and S-II for this, to build a HST-palette image, later.

I managed to solve the orthogonality problem between the optical path and the CCD. Now stars are as good as they can in my imaging system. I have reduced Meade LX200 GPS 12" f10 to f5 by misusing a Celestron f6.3 reducer by placing it at longer distance from CCD and hence grove the reduction factor.
The price is coma at both ends of the image but I can live with it. This system gives me about 30* field and a spatial resolution of 0,75 arc seconds/pixel. 

An experimental starless image. Stars are removed in one processing step and placed back with zero data lost. Sometimes I publish an image with a reduced stars to show the actual nebula better. It looks kind of nice, or spooky, that's a matter of taste.




Closeup

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 @ 6Hz 
Image Scale, 0,75 arcseconds/pixel 
Exposures H-alpha 15x1200s, binned 1x1=5h
O-III 1x1200s binned 3x3



Wednesday, September 15, 2010

NGC 55, irregular galaxy in constellation Sulptor



Note. Color balance edited 16.09.

NGC 55, barred irregular galaxy in constellation Sculptor. Distance about 7 million light years.



Closeup

When I was stacking the Luminance channel of NGC55, I noticed two moving objects in a field.
I made animations of them to show the movement. It could be nice to know, what they are. When I'll find out,
I'll post the information here!
UPDATE
A friend in Finnish astronomical group, "Astronetti", found the information for objects by using the "Minor Planet Checker"  Here is the information for both objects:

Object designation         R.A.           Decl.         V       Offsets          Motion/hr   Orbit  Further observations?
 (20031) 1992 OO         00 14 06.8  -39 17 11  15.7   9.0W    5.4S    20-    35-   12o  None needed at this time.
 
  2005 UD530               00 13 51.8  -39 13 53  19.7  11.9W   2.1S    33-     0+    3o  Desirable between 2010 Sept.            
  15-Oct. 15.


Animated areas are marked in this single 600s luminance frame.

Information:
Location, Brisbane Australia
Date, 14.09.2010
Time Zone, UTC +10h
The animation has13 x 600s frames, taken between 10:25 and 13:31 UTC.



The whole field animated showing both moving objects. First object at Two a clock position and the second one at Eight a clock position.


Closeup animation of first object.



An animated closeup of the second object.


It's always fascinating to see something moving in a deep space! An other part of fun is trying to find out, what it might be.


Technical details:

16" RCOS ja Apogee U9000 camera. 
LRGB combo. An Australian remote telescope
13x600s for the Luminance and 3x600s / RGB-channel . Dark, Bias and Flat calibrated.
Raw data is shared by 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.

A general note:
Seeing was really bad during the imaging sequence, FWHM varied between 8" -5,5"