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Thursday, October 7, 2010

M57, the "Ring Nebula", project finalized







A narrow band and broad band luminance mix image of the M57 as a bi color, H-alpha & O-III, composition.Not too commonly imaged outer halo structure can be seen in an image. There is least two layers of it, outer one is faintly seen in this image. A clear O-III signal is visible in a first layer of outer halo.
The halo was clear in H-alpha channel and there was some hints of it in luminance one.

Ring Nebula, M57, NGC 6822, locates in constellation Lyra, near a very bright star Vega. This planetary nebula lays about 2300 light years away from the Earth and has a diameter of 1,3 light years.
The small angular diameter, 230" x 230", makes this target difficult to image. The central white dwarf of planetary nebula nucleus is seen in an image as a Bluish dim star, visual magnitude is 15,75. Star was visible only in O-III channel and luminance channel.

A closeup



Less compressed image in my Portfolio:
http://astroanarchy.zenfolio.com/p1072219942/h2becaeff#h2becaeff

Technical details:

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 @ 8,5Hz
Image Scale, 0,75 arcseconds/pixel
Exposures H-alpha 9x1200s, binned 1x1
O-III 3x1200s, binned 1x1
Luminance, IDAS LP-filter 9 x 600s, binned 1x1


Wednesday, October 6, 2010

3D-study of NGC 300 galaxy



An experiment with the NGC 300. All the stars from our milky way are removed and the original 2D-galaxy image is the projected to a 3D-surface. The resulting 3D-model is animated to a movie file. The purpose is to show the actual shape of the galaxy, now distorted by a perspective.


Original 2D-image and the technical data:








NGC 300







NGC 300, the spiral galaxy in constellation Sculptor, distance is about 6 million light years.

 It's likely, that NGC300 and NGC55 forms a gravitationally bound pair.
I have shot NGC 55, an irregular galaxy, ealier and it can be found here:
http://astroanarchy.blogspot.com/2010/09/ngc-55-irregular-galaxy-in.html

Image of NGC 55
"NGC300 and NGC55 forms a gravitationally bound pair."

Surface brightness is lowish and this image gave me a hard time when processing the raw data. I tried to keep a "diffused" look of it. Active parts of this galaxy can be seen as a Blue and Red areas in a spiral arms.


A closeup


Technical details:

16" RCOS ja Apogee U9000 camera. 
LRGB combo. An Australian remote telescope
5x1200s for the Luminance and 2x600s / 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, added at 50% weight.
Levels, curves and color combine in PS CS3.

Something extra in my image

A bright trail trough a single raw frame of NGC 300.

A closeup, there is odd looking pattern inside of trail.


Mystery was solved by a help from Bert Candusio, the administrator of Northern Galactic group.
Object seen in the image is a geocentric satellite COSMOS 1536.
Thank you Bert.


Tuesday, October 5, 2010

M57, the "Ring Nebula" NGC 6882





Narrow band image of the M57 as a bi color, H-alpha & O-III, composition.
Not too commonly imaged outer halo structure can be seen in an image. There is least two layers of it, outer one is faintly seen in this image. There is clear O-III signal too in a first layer of outer halo.

Ring Nebula, M57, NGC 6822, locates in constellation Lyra, near a very bright star Vega. This planetary nebula lays about 2300 light years away from the Earth and has a diameter of  1,3 light years.
The small angular diameter, 230" x 230", makes this target difficult to image. The central white dwarf of planetary nebula nucleus is seen in an image as a Bluish dim star, visual magnitude is 15,75. Star was visible only in O-III channel.


A closeup


Technical details:

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 @ 8,5Hz
Image Scale, 0,75 arcseconds/pixel
Exposures H-alpha 9x1200s, binned 1x1
O-III 3x1200s, binned 1x1