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Wednesday, April 11, 2012

IC 410 in Auriga, the scale in a sky




I made this zoom in series to show the actual size of this object in the sky.
I have placed a white circle, at lover Left corners, in the image series below. It shows the angular size of the full Moon in the sky. Moon has an apparent diameter ~30 arc minutes, that's equal to 0,5 degrees.

Zooming into Auriga
sorry about large image, please, bear with me


Click for a large image. NOTE. a large image, 1024 x 3800 pixels and 4,5MB


Original images used for the zoom in series, with technical data, from top to bottom

  1. At top, a 12 panel mosaic of Auriga:
  2. An eight panel mosaic of IC 405 and  410, cropped from large mosaic above

  3. A four panel mosaic of IC 405 and 410:

  4. One panel image of IC 405 and 410:

  5. A cropped closeup from image above

  6. A closeup with a longer, 2000mm, focal length: 



www.tips-fb.com Posted by J-P Metsavainio at 7:09 PM 0 comments
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Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Ones again, it's over



I feel sad to say good bye for my addiction for nearly a six months.

Astronomical darkness will end at 08.04. officially but at the moment we have only couple of hours darkness so there is not much point to do any long exposure imaging any more. Here, at 65N, we'll have next dark night at 06.09. 2012 and just for about two hours. 


All my images from the Autumn/Spring seasons 2011-2012 as a poster

 Click for a  large image, NOTE 3300x1800 pixels and 6,75MB


A slideshow


Note. Usually two palettes are shown, HST and Visual spectrum (more or less Red)
All the images, with technical details, can be found in my portfolio:
http://astroanarchy.zenfolio.com/p456394140



Autumn season 2011


The main work for the Autumn season 2011 was the very large 18-panel mosaic of Cygnus constellation.
Original blog post, with technical details, can be seen here:
I have no a large photographic print on my wall, image here:

The main work for the Spring season 2012 was a mosaic image too, a 12-panel mosaic of constellation Auriga. Original blog post can be seen here: 

Tools used

I shot everything in this imaging period with my camera lenses. At first with the Tokina AT-X 300 f2.8 and most of the images with Canon EF 200mm f1.8, after I managed to fix the orthogonality issue between the CCD and the lens. All images was taken with QHY9, a cooled astro camera, and Baader narrowband filter set. (H-a, O-III and S-II)
Summer time

I will update my blog regulatory during the Summer season though. I have considered about renting a remote operating scope now and then, if I'll find funds for it. An naturally I will publish my experiments too and fine tune equipment's and work flow.



Some of the publications from the season 2011-12




At end of the Spring season I had my first exhibition about astronomical imaging  in Oulu Museum of Art.
There was about twenty or so large framed prints to see and one lecture for interested.  I have hardly any images of the event, here are some bad ones with mobile phone... Unlike seen in images, there was actually lots of visitors.



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and

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and

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My most published image, in past season, was the "Cosmic curiosity", or "?", as I named it originally.
It get printed in several Finnish news papers and online news and it was one of the "Space Picture of the week" by National Geography magazine.

Link to an original blog post:




www.tips-fb.com Posted by J-P Metsavainio at 1:49 PM 4 comments
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Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Veil Nebula, reprocessed with some new data



I found some forgotten data, from my hard, disk for the Veil Nebula. Image of this supernova remnant was originally published at 30. October 2011. I reprocessed the whole image with new data, here is the result.


Veil Nebula
Supernova remnant in constellation Cygnus
Image is in Natural color palette from the emission of ionized elements, 
R=Hydrogen + Sulfur, G=Oxygen and B=Oxygen + Hydrogen.

Note. The "noise" in the background is not a noise but countless stars!

Veil Nebula is a cloud of ionized gas and dust, leftovers from an exploded star. The star went off some 5000-8000 years ago at distance of about 1470 light years. This, relatively faint target, is difficult to image due to the large angular diameter, about three degrees, and a dense star field.
This is a second version of this object, older version can be seen Here. 

I have made a 3D-animation about the possible shapes of this SNR, it can be seen Here.


HST-palette, from the emission of ionized elements,
R=Sulfur, G=Hydrogen and B=Oxygen.


1:1 cropped image to show the resolution.
Not a bad one for the 200mm camera lens...



Technical details:

Processing work flow:
Image acquisition, MaxiDL v5.07.
Stacked and calibrated in CCDStack2.
Deconvolution with a CCDStack2 Positive Constraint, 33 iterations, added at 50% weight
Levels, curves and color combine in PS CS3.

Optics, Canon EF 200mm camera lens at f1.8
Camera, QHY9
Guiding, Meade LX200 GPS 12" and a Lodestar guider
Image Scale, ~5 arcseconds/pixel
New exposures H-alpha 13x1200s,
S-II and O-III information are from an older image

















www.tips-fb.com Posted by J-P Metsavainio at 5:29 PM 0 comments

Monday, March 19, 2012

IC 443, NGC 2174 & neighbors as a two panel mosaic



 I managed to get some data for second part of two frame mosaic of IC 443, SNR, and NGC 2174, the "Monkey Head Nebula". Nights are getting shorter and shorter very fast, up here 65N. In a two weeks, we'll be out of astronomical darkness for a six months.

A two frame mosaic of IC 443, NGC 2174 and Sharpless objects 247, 254, 255, 256 and 257
In constellation Gemini 

HST-palette, from the emission of ionized elements, R=Sulfur, G=Hydrogen and B=Oxygen.
Note. A largish image, about 2 meg and 1200 x 1600 pixels.

Closeups


An upper half of the mosaic, details here:

Closeup of IC 443


A closeup from bottom Right, Sharpless objects 254, 255, 256 and 257


 A closeup from top Right, Messier 35


A closeup from middle Right, Sharpless 247, Sh2-247, at Right



Image in visual spectrum

Image is in visual spectrum from narrowband channels.


IC 443, also known as Sharpless 248 (Sh2-248) or the "Jellyfish Nebula", is a supernova remnant in the constellation Gemini at distance of about 5000 light years. The actual size of the SNR is roughly 70 light years. This image spans about 10 degrees of sky. (Twenty Moons side by side in the sky.) 
At top Right lays an open group, Messier 35. 
At bottom Right, the Sharpless object 247, Sh2-247, can be seen as a bright dot.

NGC 2174, the "Monkey Head Nebula", (OCL 476 or Cr 84) is an open cluster surrounded by emission nebula in Gemini at distance of about 6400 light years.

A map

Constellation Gemini, Simeis 147 can be seen at upper Right.


Older versions

Older version of IC 443, shot with Tokina AT-X 300mm f2.8 lens and QHY9 at February 2009, can be seen here:
http://astroanarchy.blogspot.com/2009/02/ic443-in-hst-palette.html Colors in this new image are partly borrowed from this older one.

A closeup of NGC 2175, the "Monky Head Nebula"

A study about the apparent scale in the sky can be seen here:


Technical details:

Processing work flow:
Image acquisition, MaxiDL v5.07.
Stacked and calibrated in CCDStack2.
Levels, curves and color combine in PS CS3.

Optics, Canon EF 200mm camera lens at f1.8
Camera, QHY9
Guiding, Meade LX200 GPS 12" and a Lodestar guider
Image Scale, ~5 arc-seconds/pixel
Only four 1200s exposures of H-alpha emission for both panels.
Other channels, O-III and S-II, are from an older image of mine.
(Link above, under "Older versions")

www.tips-fb.com Posted by J-P Metsavainio at 4:20 PM 1 comments
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