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Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Editors' Choice


My Butterfly Nebula image was selected as an "Editors' Choice"
by Sky&Telescope magazine.

Monday, November 3, 2008

NGC6888, the "Crescent Nebula"

NGC6888 in Hubble palette "natural" color version
H-alpha channel
I imagined the "Butterfly Neula" 29.09.2008.
At the time I left NGC6888 out of the field of view
to be able to better frame the Butterly nebula.
You can see part of the NGC6888 at lower right corner of the Butterly nebula image here:
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At this time I wanted to capture the Crescent Nebula with the surraunding nebulosity.
NGC6888 is usually seen in longer focallenght images but I found wider field
as interesting doe the colorful and detailed nebula structure.
Imaging data: Camera, QHY8 - Filters, Baader 7nm H-alpha, Baader 8,5nm O-III and Baader 8nm S-II - Optics, Tokina AT-X 300mm @ f2.8 - Exposures, 4X 1200s H-alpha, 3 X 1200 O-III and 2X1200s S-II + flats and bias - Guiding, LX200 GPS 12" + PHD-guiding and Lodestar
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I made a small mosaic from NGC6888 and the Butterfly Nebula.
The colorful "tale" of the Butterfly spans trough both images.

Sh2-224 & Sh2-223

In this image, there is two supernova remnants!
Both are extremely faint. Exposure time was 15x1200s = 5 hours,
and in final image there was very litle information.
I wanted to try this difficult targe to see can it be imaged from the city center and
with QHY8 color camera. After tweaking the data about an hour, I was able to say, it can.
Image here is a false color image, H-alpha = Red.
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Imaging data:
Camera, QHY8 - Filters, Baader 7nm H-alpha
Optics, Tokina AT-X 300mm @ f2.8
Exposures, 15X 1200s H-alpha, flats and bias
Guiding, LX200 GPS 12" + PHD-guiding and Lodestar

Sunday, November 2, 2008

Cassiopeia A

Supernova remnant in Cassiopeia.
This target is most difficult to capture and process.
I never realise how dim this really is. "Cartes Du Ciel" gives surface brightness
for this object as low as Mag 37 !
Fast optics, Tokina 300mm @ f2.8 helps to capture those few photons.
There is some internal structure details visible in S-II channel,
they can be seen in Hubble palette image as red.
More information in Wikipedia:
There is two version of this image here, first image is in "natural" color composition
from narrowband channels, H-alpha 100% + 35%S-II = RED, O-III = GREEN and
O-III 100% + 30%H-alpha = BLUE.
Second version is Hubble palette composition. S-II =RED, H-alpha = GREEN and O-III = BLUE
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Imaging data: Camera, QHY8 - Filters, Baader 7nm H-alpha, Baader 8,5nm O-III and Baader 8nm S-II - Optics, Tokina AT-X 300mm @ f2.8 - Exposures, 12X 1200s H-alpha, 1 X 1200 O-III and 6X1200s S-II + flats and bias - Guiding, LX200 GPS 12" + PHD-guiding and Lodestar

Is there a outer burst in Cassiopeia A?

This starless image might show a hint of it.