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Saturday, September 14, 2013

Cygnus mosaic in natural colors, reprocessed


I haven't been able to open up this season yet, since some of my equipment are not yet  back from the factory service. To keep up my processing skills, I reprocessed the great 18-panels mosaic image of Cygnus. Mapped color version was very much OK but I wasn't happy with natural color version.


The 18-panels mosaic of nebulae in constellation Cygnus
Click for a large image. NOTE. A large image, 2300x1500 pixels and ~5MB

Image is in visual spectrum, red light is emitted by an ionized Hydrogen (H-alpha). Blueish hues are from ionized Oxygen (O-III). NOTE. An apparent size of the full Moon is marked at lower right corner as a scale

This 18-panels mosaic is hot with Canon EF 200mm F1.8 camera lens, QHY9 cooled astronomical camera and the Baader narrowband filter set. Total exp. time is around 120h. More information with the original blog post  HERE. Original image is 15.000 pixels wide and over 300MB.

A detail from the image above to show the image resolution
Click for a large image

Not a bad resolution for a 200mm camera lens!




Friday, September 13, 2013

An experimental 3D-study of North America and the Pelican Nebulae


This is an experimental test with a 3D-conversion of my astronomical images. Only real elements from my original image are used, there is nothing added but the volumetric information!

NOTE. This is a personal vision about shapes and volumes, based on some scientific data and an artistic impression.

North America and the Pelican Nebulae as an experimental 3D-model
NOTE. A largish image, about 7MB, let it load for few seconds.



My original image of the Nebula is used for the animation
Click for the large image

Image is in mapped colors

Original blog post about NGC 1499 with technical details
http://www.astroanarchy.blogspot.fi/2011/11/ngc-7000-north-america-pelican-nebulae.html

More 3D-experiments can be seen here: 
http://www.astroanarchy.blogspot.fi/search/label/animations






Monday, September 9, 2013

Sh2-112, processed with an additional data



I'm waiting to start imaging a new material but there are few items in factory service and I'll need to wait them to come back. Mean while I reprocessed my image of Sharpless object 112 in constellation Cygnus. 

Originally I had too little exposures to reveal the background nebulous properly. I noticed, that I actually have a very deep exposures for this object but taken with very different image scale. I have shot this area with a Canon EF 200mm f1.8 optics and the background nebulous stands out very nicely there. 

I have developed a new method to combine data from very different sources. It's based on signal to noise analysis, a very weak signal doesn't usually has too much details in it. The weak signal from a low resolution source can be used with a high resolution signal and best of both image types will be used in final image.

Original versions of images bellow can be seen in this blog post:
http://astroanarchy.blogspot.fi/2012/12/sharpless-112-sh2-112_5.html

Sharpless 112
An emission nebula in constellation Cygnus

Image in mapped colors from the light emitted by ionized elements. 


Red=Sulfur, Green=Hydrogen and Blue=Oxygen.


The additional data is taken from this wide field image of the same object


This is a small part of a very large mosaic image of the constellation Cygnus, the mosaic can be seen HERE.
Sh2-112 is located at lower center of the image and the weak background nebulae stand out clearly. Image is shot with a very fast opticla configuration, a Canon EF 200mm f1.8 lens at full open, a cooled astronomical camera, the QHY9 and the Baader narrowband filter set. Total exposure time for this image is around 4h.

Sh2-112 in visual spectrum

Image is in visual colors, combined from the narrowband data.


Technical details:

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

Optics, Meade LX200 GPS 12" @ f5
Camera, QHY9
Guiding, SXV-AO, an active optics unit, and Lodestar guide camera 8Hz
Image Scale, ~0,8 arc-seconds/pixel
21 x 1200s exposures for the H-alpha, emission of ionized Hydrogen = 7h
3 x 1200s exposures for the O-III, emission of ionized Oxygen = 1h
3 x 1200s exposures for the S-II, emission of ionized Sulfur = 1h

Additional exposures for the background nebulae are shot with a very fast opticla configuration, a Canon EF 200mm f1.8 lens at full open, a cooled astronomical camera, the QHY9 and the Baader narrowband filter set. Total exposure time for this extra data is around 4h.




Sunday, September 8, 2013

Bubble Nebula reprocessed


Since my processing technique gets better and weather doesn't give any support, I have reprocessed some older images. There is now star colors added and other processing is tweaked too.

Image is shot with a QHY9 and the Meade LX200 GPS 12" @ f5, pixel scale 0.65pixels/arc second.
Original versions from October 2009, with technical details:
http://astroanarchy.blogspot.com/2009/10/bubble-nebula-finalized.html


Sharpless 162, NGC 7635, the "Bubble Nebula"
Ra 23h 20m 48s Dec +61° 12′ 06″

Buy a photographic print from 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. Star colors are mixed from the NB channels, Red=H-a, G=O-III and B= 85%O-III + 15%H-a.This composition is very close to a visual spectrum.


Buy a photographic print from HERE

Image is in mapped colors from the emission of ionized elements, R=Sulfur, G=Hydrogen & B=Oxygen.Star colors are mixed from the NB channels, Red=H-a, G=O-III & B= 85%O-III + 15%H-a.

INFO

This is one of the most interesting looking structures in a sky.
NGC 7635 aka "Bubble Nebula, Sh2-162 or Caldwell11, is a Hydrogen emission nebula in constellation Cassiopeia. It locates near the open cluster M 52 at distance of about 11.000 light years from the Earth.
The bubble structure is created by a strong stellar wind, a radiation pressure, from massive hot magnitude 8,7 central star, SAO 20575, it can be seen in an image inside of the bubble, off centered at Right.
Bubble is an expanding shock front inside a giant molecular cloud and it has a diameter more than Six light years. The spherical formation is expanding at speed of 6500.000 km/h, due the huge scale and distance we can't see the movement easily. In a century, the bubble in this image will be only about one pixel wider, than now! ( ~1 arc second)
Strong UV-radiation from a central star ionized elements in a gas and makes them glow at typical wavelength to each element. (Hydrogen glows Red light as Sulfur, Oxygen emits Green/Blue light at visible wavelengths)

Orientation
A  wider field image of the region, Bubble can be seen at ten a clock position as a bright "pearl".


Buy a photographic print from HERE

Gray circle shows the apparent size of the full Moon.


The Bubble Nebula as an experimental 3D-model


This is a looped video, click to start and stop. Original movie is in HD1080p resolution.
More info about the animation in this blog post:
http://astroanarchy.blogspot.fi/2013/02/3d-study-of-bubble-nebula.html