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Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Sharpless 157, Sh2-157, apparent scale in the sky





I have shot many targets with several focal lengths. 
Due that, I will publish some images as an image sets, with different field of view and detail levels.
The fractal nature of our universe stands out nicely by this way and it will make the orientation more easy.

Many times, it's difficult to understand the image scale of astronomical images.
Due that, I will add a Moon circle in some of the images to show the angular scale in a sky. 
The full Moon has an angular size of ~30 arc minutes, that's equal to ~0,5 degrees.


Sharpless 157
In constellation Cassiopeia

Natural color composition from the emission of ionized elements, R=80%Hydrogen+20%Sulfur, G=100%Oxygen and B=85%Oxygen+15%Hydrogen to compensate otherwise missing H-beta emission. Star colors are mixed from the NB channels by the same way. This composition is very close to a visual spectrum.
Note. Size of the full Moon is marked as a gray circle, at upper Right corner, for a scale.

Other targets in images above

The "Bubble Nebula" can be seen in upper Left corners.
The "Wizard Nebula" locates at utmost Right at the top panorama stripe. 


There are two individual images used to make this image series
  1. Sharpless 157, http://astroanarchy.blogspot.com/2011/03/sh2-157-reprocessed.html
  2. Wizard Nebula, http://astroanarchy.blogspot.com/2011/02/sh2-142-wizard-nebula-wide-field.html


Monday, June 13, 2011

Butterfly to Crescent nebula panorama as a stereoscopic 3D pair.






Parallel vision 3D



Cross vision 3D


Original 2D:
Other 3D-formats:


NOTE! This is a personal vision about forms and shapes, based on some known facts and an artistic impression.

Sunday, June 12, 2011

NGC 1499, the "California Nebula", reprocessed




Since my processing technique gets better and we don't have any astronomical darkness until mid September, I have reprocessed some older images. There is now better star colors and other processing is tweaked too.


NGC1499, the "California Nebula"
RA 04h 03m 18.00s Dec +36° 25′ 18.0"


Click for large images

NGC 1499, the "California Nebula" locates in constellation Perseus. Distance is about 1000 light years.
The nebula covers about 2,5 degrees of sky.
HST-palette composition from emission of ionized elements, R=Sulfur, G=Hydrogen and B=Oxygen.
Narrowband data was used for Star colors, mixture of channels was the same as in "natural" color composition image below.

To see the size of this object (the apparent angular scale) in a sky, I have made some image series to demonstrate it. Please, have a look HERE.


Natural color composition from the emission of ionized elements, R=80%Hydrogen+20%Sulfur, G=100%Oxygen and B=85%Oxygen+15%Hydrogen to compensate otherwise missing H-beta emission. This composition is very close to a visual spectrum.

All the exposures, I have taken for this object, are used. Total exposure time is now about 20h together.
Two camera lenses was used to capture the data, a Tokina AT 300mm f2.8 and a Canon EF 200mm f1.8, both lenses was used at full aperture. Baader narrowband filter set was used, H-alpha, O-III and S-II
QHY8, cooled astronomical camera, was used with Tokina lens and a newer QHY9 with a Canon lens.

The original versions with imaging data:
and

As an addition, there is a longer focal length closeup image of NGC1499 used to boost details in mid section of the wide field image. Original post and details here: http://astroanarchy.blogspot.com/2010/12/ngc-1499-california-nebula-closeup.html

A natural color composition from the emission of ionized elements, R=80%Hydrogen+20%Sulfur, G=100%Oxygen and B=85%Oxygen+15%Hydrogen to compensate otherwise missing H-beta emission. This composition is very close to a visual spectrum.

Technical details for the detail

Telescope, Meade LX200 GPS 12" @ f5
Camera, QHY9 Guiding, SXV-AO @ 4,5Hz
Image Scale, 0,75 arcseconds/pixel
Baader H-alpha 7nm 27x1200s, binned 2x2 = 9h



Butterfly Nebula, apparent scale in the sky




I have shot many targets with several focal lengths. 
Due that, I will publish some images as an image sets, with different field of view and detail levels.
The fractal nature of our universe stands out nicely by this way and it will make the orientation more easy.

Many times, it's difficult to understand the image scale of astronomical images.
Due that, I will add a Moon circle in some of the images to show the angular scale in a sky. 
The full Moon has an angular size of ~30 arc minutes, that's equal to ~0,5 degrees.


The "Butterfly Nebula"
In constellation Cygnus

Images are in HST-palette, (HST=Hubble Space Telescope) from the emission of ionized elements, R=Sulfur, G=Hydrogen and B=Oxygen. Star colors are mixed from the NB channels, Red=H-a, G=O-III and B= 85%O-III + 15%H-a.
NOTE. The size of the full Moon (0,5 degrees) is marked as a gray circle in all of the images.

Images used in the series above

First image is a three panel mosaic of the "Cygnus Trio"
Second one is two panels from a mosaic.
Third is a one panel
fourth is a zoomed crob from the above image.
The mosaic wide field was shot with a Tokina AT-X 300mm f2.8 camera lens with a QHY8 astro camera and a Baader narrowband filter set

All images in this page have been part of an older mosaic, the "Cygnus Trio"
It was my very first APOD (Astronomy Picture Of  Day) published  by NASA.
http://astroanarchy.blogspot.com/2008/11/apod.html