Nebulae

Orion Nebula (M42)

 in Gallery / Nebulae  tagged astro-images / images / nebula / orion

This was one of the first of my astro-photos that I was happy with – about 3 years after I started – and it is still my favorite target. It was captured in late September of 2008, very late at night. The problem with Orion (for those of us living in the northern parts of Earth) is that it is never visible in the summer nights. In late summer it comes up in the east just before sunrise and by spring it sets in the west shortly after sunset. So it’s a great sight in the winter night sky and […]

Horsehead and Flame Nebulae (Barnard 33 and NGC2024)

 in Gallery / Nebulae  tagged flame / horsehead / nubula

This was one of my first successful targets and this version was captured in late 2012 to get the benefit of the better equipment (and maybe skills) I have acquired since the early days. This was captured at a dark sky site, but using a narrowband hydrogen-alpha filter for the red channel. The Horsehead is a “dark nebula”, meaning that the shape we see is formed by clouds of dust blocking light from behind it. It is located in the constellation Orion. The brightest star seen here (Alnitak) is the left side of Orion’s belt. The nebula is about 1,500 […]

Rosette Nebula (Caldwell 49)

 in Gallery / Nebulae  tagged nebula / rosette

The Rosette is a large area of hydrogen in the Monoceros region. This is a 2×1 mosaic of H-alpha (red) and O-3 (green & blue) exposures because the target is so big that it doesn’t fit in one frame – even with my fairly short telescope. I had intended to add some RGB data to this image, but that will have to wait until I can get to a dark sky site. Or at least until near the new moon! This version is just H-alpha for red and O-3 for green and blue. Scope: AT111EDT at f/5.6 Mount: AP Mach1 […]

Fish Head & Heart Nebulae (IC1795/1805)

 in Gallery / Nebulae

The Fish Head (IC1795) is the bright region in the upper left.  The Heart (IC1805) is the entire right side. This Heart Nebula image is a mosaic of 2 frames, captured at Wa-chur-ed Observatory using narrowband filters (hydrogen-alpha, sulfur-2, and oxygen-3).  The OIII and SII filters used have a bandwidth of 12nm, which is not very narrow for these spectral lines, so there is only a small variation in the dominant red (hydrogen) color. The Heart is an emission nebula in the constellation Cassiopeia and about 7,500 light years from Earth. It does look like a heart, sort of. I […]

crab

Crab Nebula (M1)

 in Gallery / Nebulae

In 1054 astronomers in the middle east and Asia recorded the appearance of a supernova.  The star was so bright that for several weeks it could be seen in the daytime.  The Crab Nebula is the remnants of that supernova and its relatively young age explains why it is more dense and complex than most such nebulae.  It is approximately 6,500 light-years from Earth in the constellation  Taurus.  The image consists of H-alpha, OIII, and SII narrowband images, so the color is not exactly true, but I adjusted it to optimize color accuracy and differentiation between the three parts. This […]

California Nebula

 in Gallery / Nebulae  tagged california nebula / emission / narrowband / ngc1499

(Updated Dec. 2017) This nebula contains all 3 of the target spectral lines, hydrogen-alpha, sulphur-2, and oxygen-3. But the O-3 signal is so weak that you could literally count the photons by hand as they arrived!  To provide some color in the processed image I could have (largely) ignored the O-3 and made a bi-color image of H-a and S-2.  Instead, I used a slight variation on a commonly used process; creating a bi-color image from S-2 and O-3 (S-2 as red and O-3 as green and blue), then applying H-a as a luminance layer over the bi-color image.  The […]