Astro Anarchy

Monday, December 23, 2013

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas to all!

Christmas Tree Cluster and the Cone Nebula in constellation Monoceros, just East from the Orion.
More info in THIS blog post.

Wednesday, December 18, 2013

A start of the new project, Cepheus mosaic part1

I'm about to make a similar mosaic out of constellation Cepheus, than I made out of constellation Cygnus.
The first part is ready now. It's a four panel mosaic showing two main objects, IC 1396 and the Sharpless 129 (Sh2-129). I managed to get visible an extremely dim planetary nebula candidate, OU4, inside the Sharpless 129.

Cepheus Mosaic part 1, four panels

Note. A largish image, 3MB and 1700 x 1300 pixels

Mapped colors from the emission of ionized elements,

R=Sulfur, G=Hydrogen and B=Oxygen.

Buy a photographic print from HERE

At this first part of the Cepheus mosaic, there are four individual panels stitched together. At lower right corner, there is the Sharpless object 129 (Sh2-129). The blueish area, inside Sh2-129, is a recently found plaentary nebula candidate, OU4. The famous astrophotographer, Nicolas Outters, has made this discovery, HERE is a paper about it. OU4 is an extremely dim formation. 11h of O-III light with very fast Canon 200mm EF f1.8 camera lens, was needed to have some hint about it.

I will continue this project, as soon as weather allows. The final mosaic will be 10-14 panels larg

Mosaic in visual spectrum
Note. A largish image, 3MB and 1700x1300 pixels

Image is in Natural color palette from the emission of ionized elements,

R=Hydrogen + Sulfur, G=Oxygen and B=Oxygen + Hydrogen.
Buy a photographic print from HERE

A closeup of Sh2-129 and OU4

Image is in Natural color palette from the emission of ionized elements,

R=Hydrogen + Sulfur, G=Oxygen and B=Oxygen + Hydrogen.
Buy a photographic print from HERE

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

Exposures for H-alpha:
3x1200s for each panel,
Exposures for O-III:
33x1200s for Sh2-129 area
1x1200s/panel, for a star color.

The data from my older images are used for this mosaic
IC 1396, http://astroanarchy.blogspot.fi/2011/10/ic-1396-home-of-elephants-trunk-nebula.html
Sh2-129: http://astroanarchy.blogspot.fi/2011/06/panorama-mosaic-from-ic1396-to.html

Monday, December 16, 2013

NGC 6823 and many many stars

This wide field image shows many targets in very dense star field. From the Sharpless catalog, Sh2-90 and Sh2-88, from the NGC catalog, NGC 6820, 6823 and 6830 and many other named objects.

NGC 6823

In constellation Vulpecula, click for a large image

A bicolor image, H-a=RED, O-III=Green and Blue. This combination is very near to visual spectrum.
Note, the "noise" in the image is actually countless number of stars.
Click for a large image, 1200x1700 pixels and 3,3MB
You can buy a real high quality photographic print from HERE

A detail

This detail image is about 1:1 scale from the original photo.

Orientation

An animation, stars vs starless
Click for a large image

A starless image shows some details, otherwise get buried under a massive amount of stars.
There are some filament like structures visible at lower left and lower middle.

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 33% 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

H-alpha, 12x1200s = 4h
O-III, 12x1200s = 4h
Total exposure time 8h

Hydrogen emission only (H-alpha)

You can buy a real high quality photographic print from HERE

Saturday, December 14, 2013

APOD by NASA, Astro Anarchy gets published

Astronomy Picture of the Day

My shot of the Bubble Nebula was selected as an APOD (Astronomy Picture of the Day) by NASA.
You can see the NASA page here: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap131214.html

The Bubble Nebula

In constellation Cassiopeia