COPYRIGHT, PLEASE NOTE

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

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

The Propeller Nebula as an anaglyph Red/Cyan 3D



3D-NOTE!
You'll need Red/Cyan Eyeglasses to be able to see images as 3D.
If you have a Red and Blue filters, you can use them! Red goes to Left eye.


As many times before, I have turned the image of Propeller Nebula, DWB 111, to an experimental 3D-study.




Other 3D-formats:


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

Monday, October 3, 2011

First light for the Autumn season 2011



Finally!!!

Last night I managed to fix my "backup camera", some soldering and tweaking was needed but it worked out.
My first target was the "Propeller Nebula" in constellation Cygnus.


DWB 111, the Propeller Nebula
Ra 20h 17m 57s Dec -+44° 09′ 20″ in constellation Cygnus


HST-palette, (HST=Hubble Space Telescope)
from the emission of ionized elements, R=Sulfur, G=Hydrogen and B=Oxygen.


Propeller Nebula (DWB 111, MRSL 497). This S-like formation is part of the much large area of emission nebulae in Cygnus. There are very little information around, the origin and distance  of this structure is unknown. It seems to be mostly front of the associated nebula. I will make an experimental 3D-study out of this later. 

A closeup from the image above.



Image is in Natural color palette from the emission of ionized elements, 
R=Hydrogen + Sulfur, G=Oxygen and B=Oxygen + Hydrogen.


Technical details:

Processing work flow:
Image acquisition, MaxiDL v5.07.
Stacked and calibrated in CCDStack2.
Deconvolution with a CCDStack2 Positive Constraint, 33 iterations.
Levels, curves and color combine in PS CS3.

Optics, Tokina AT-X 300mm camera lens at f2.8
Camera, QHY9 Guiding, SXV-AO @ 6,5Hz
Image Scale, 3,5 arcseconds/pixel
Exposures H-alpha 15x1200s, binned 1x1
H-alpha 10x1200s, binned 1x1
O-III 14x1200s, binned 1x1
S-II 5x1200s, binned 2x2
Total exposure time ~10h

An experimental starless image shows the actual nebula better.





Ps.

It looks to me, that there is something going on at Two a clock position in this image. It could be a planetary nebula? There are nearly five hours of O-III in this image, with a fast f2.8 optics, so the emission of ionized Oxygen is not very strong. I couldn't find this feature from PN database, I must study this more later.

Here is a closeup of the area of interest


Just a stretched O-III & H-alpha channels animated

Not much, after about Five hours of exposures. There is nothing visible, about this shape, at S-II channel. Centeroid of the brightest spot is,  Ra 20h 10m 39.7s Dec -+44° 12′ 01.9" and the diameter about 360 arc seconds.

UPDATE

Iiro Sairanen, from a Finnish astro group "Avaruus.fi", found this PN candidate from the Simbad database :
http://simbad.cfa.harvard.edu/simbad/sim-id?Ident=%40114921&Name=PN%20PM%20%201-320&submit=submit
It's known under a name PN PM 1-320


Saturday, October 1, 2011

Uh, this is too hard....

No first light for the season, too many troubles, one more clear night wasted.

I have tried several times but either weather or technique has failed. First my observatory control laptop fried and it took a long time to re install everything.
 Now my camera has fried too, just 30 minutes ago. I'll have to send it back to the China but there is a national holiday going on about two first weeks of the October...

I managed to get just a single 20min. exposure before something really bad happened to my cooled astronomical camera. There is a bad tilt in optical axes and other flaws too, I don't count this as a first light.



Single 20 min. exposure of the "Propeller Nebula" in constellation Cygnus.



A new set of wide fields vs closeups



Weather looks kind of good now, I might have something new to publish in few days! I never have had a first light for the Autumn season so late...

Since the weather doesn't support shooting any new material, I have done more image pairs from same target in different focal lengths, usually a 200-300mm camera lens and my old Meade LX200 GPS 12" telescope.
I have done earlier some scale studies  from the same material, with Moon circle as a scale.
Now I have done just simple image pairs, showing both, a wide field and a closeup.


IC 410, in Auriga, a "cosmic fertilization"

Ra 05h 22m 39s Dec -33° 31′ 01″

HST-palette, (HST=Hubble Space Telescope)
from the emission of ionized elements, R=Sulfur, G=Hydrogen and B=Oxygen.

Links to the original images, used in image pair, from top to bottom, 300mm vs ~2000mm

1. First wide field shot: 


IC405, the "Flaming Star Nebula"

An emission Nebula in constellation Auriga


Images are in Natural color palette from the emission of ionized elements, 
R=Hydrogen + Sulfur, G=Oxygen and B=Oxygen + Hydrogen.

Links to the original images, used in image pair, from top to bottom, 300mm vs ~2000mm