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

Saturday, September 29, 2012

Two panel mosaic from the Butterfly to Crescent Nebula




Butterfly and Crescent Nebulae in constellation Cygnus

Image is in mapped colors, from the emission of ionized elements, R=Sulfur, G=Hydrogen and B=Oxygen.
The colorful "noise" at background is not a noise but countless number of stars!

This is a part of the much large, 18-panels, mosaic of constellation Cygnus, it can be seen HERE.

Image is shot at Autumn 2011, I'm publishing this here, since I have reprocessed the color data.
Image is shot with Canon EF 200mm f1.8 optics, full open, QHY9 cooled astronomical camera and the Baader narrowband filter set. (H-a. O-III and S-II) Esposure times, about two hours per channel, total six hours. 

Shooting with f1.8 optics is kind of extreme, the critical focus zone is only 7 microns (7/1000mm).
Focusing and staying in focus is really difficult at that speed, one quarter of the degrees temperature drop is enough to destroy focus. I have build a temperature compensating automatic focusing system for camera lenses. ( http://astroanarchy.blogspot.fi/2008/09/new-equipmets-and-some-development-work.html )


A closeup image of the Crescent Nebula,
it can be seen at center of the image above

Image is in HST-palette, (HST=Hubble Space Telescope)
from the emission of ionized elements, R=Sulfur, G=Hydrogen and B=Oxygen.
Star colors are mixed from the NB channels, Red=H-a, G=O-III and B= 85%O-III + 15%H-a.

This image was selected as an APOD, Astronomy Image Of the Day, by the NASA.




No comments: