Astronomy and astrophotography by Val Ricks for the love of the sky and its Creator. For a better view, toggle F11 and turn off the lights.
IC 417 is a wonderfully complex hydrogen nebula in the constellation Auriga. So many different things to see here!
This planetary nebula in Ursa Major is, like all planetary nebulae, an expanding cloud of gas and dust sloughed off a dying star. The star, which you can see in the center of the nebula, is a white dwarf, the super-hot core of what is left of the dying star. The filters used to take this shot cover three wavelengths common to planetary nebulae: Ha, NII, and OIII. In fact, the Ha filter's bandwidth is 12nm wide, and it takes in the NII line. The consequence is that I can't tell whether the red glow in this image comes from hydrogen or nitrogen. The OIII line is far more prominent, however. Ionized oxygen seems to dominate this planetary. M97's distance (and thus its size) are the subject of wildly varying reports, so I have no idea how far away this thing is.
Here is the OIII:
The Rosette Nebula is about 5,000 light years away in the constellation Monoceros. (In wider images, it really does look like a flower. See RoryG's recent image.) A long chain of nebulosity appears in very deep images to connect it to the Cone Nebula complex. (See Wolfgang Promper's image here.) This part of the Rosette Nebula is where clouds of dust and gas in front of all the lit-up ionized hydrogen clouds are silhouetted in the light. The clouds are slowly disintegrating in the ultraviolet radiation from the bright stars in the lower center of the image, the stars of cluster NGC 2244. Yet still tiny pockets of the dark stuff remain randomly ahead of the front, globs dust and gas perhaps shrinking under gravity and resisting the radiation scattering the rest of the matter around them.
This beautiful area of the sky has no bright stars. Without optical aid, it looks empty from the burbs were I live. But with the light pollution extracted, and with a sensitive camera and a large lens to gather and focus the light, great things can be seen.
This is the central and most interesting (to me) region of NGC 1499, sometimes called the California Nebula. In moderately deep images, the nebula takes on a shape something like that of the state of California. In deeper images, the shape is more like a scimitar (see, e.g., this image from Don Taylor). This much narrower view only shows the Bay Area, the darker cloud in the middle of the image. The bright nebulosity running from upper left to lower center is the coastline. In this relatively deep image, the nebulosity runs into the ocean and out past the edge of the image. The California Nebula is about 1,500 light years away, and is found in the constellation Perseus. It inhabits the same arm of the galaxy that we do.
IC 348 is the star cluster at the center of this image. It is being formed from a large cloud of gas, mostly hydrogen, about 1040 light years away. The space to the right of the cluster seems more barren of stars because the cloud of gas and dust, from which the stars are forming, blocks the light of the forming stars and the light of the stars behind the cloud. This image is 20x480" through an Astronomik Ha filter. It therefore shows only the hydrogen emission line. Full spectrum images of this area also show light reflecting from the hydrogen clouds and nearby dust and gas.
After the Pelican Nebula set behind the trees, this nebula in Cepheus was nicely positioned for a three hour set of sub-frames. During the long stretch of clear nights in September and early October, I could end the Pelican set around 1 am, then slew over to Ced 214 and begin another three hour set. This nebula is mapped similarly to the Pelican, in the Hubble Palette. Exposure times here were Ha=27x8'; OIII=30x8'; SII=38x8'. Processing was done in Neb2, Maxim DL 5, Registar, and PS CS3. The Ha is below:
This is the same data as earlier this month, but the color for this image was done in PS CS3. This method gives me more control over the color balance and intensity and makes it easier to make other changes later. I processed this to be closer to the actual strength of the data that I obtained. I believe this resulted in the colors being less grainy and the contrast more vivid. Thanks for looking.
Here is what I know how to do with the Soap Bubble Nebula. I gathered more data this week. This is 92x8' (50x8' of H-alpha and 42x8' of OIII). It was processed in Neb2, Maxim, Registar, and PS CS3. The two sets were combined using Steve Cannistra's Bi-Color Narrowband technique. I'd be happy for any suggestions as to how to improve the image.
Dave Jurasevich, an amateur astronomer, discovered this planetary nebula in 2008 while trying to image something else (see here). Keith Quattrocchi and and Melvin Helm found it independently a few days later (see here). It is very faint, actually, but here it is. This image is 20x8' in H-alpha and 11x8' in OIII, taken with the Atik 16, processed in Neb 2, Maxim DL 5, and PS CS3, mostly just stretched until it almost breaks. This image is black and white, inverted, and equalized in PS.
This is my first full narrowband image with the Orion 120mm achromat at f/4. This is what I think is the most interesting part of the Pelican Nebula in the constellation Cygnus. The colors are not what the eye would see. Most of the glowing, ionized gas here emits light that would appear red to our eyes. But here, so that we can more easily see what is going on, glowing hydrogen is colored green, glowing oxygen blue, and glowing sulphur red. Yellow is where red and green glow together. The energetic stars embedded in the nebula energize the gas and set it aglow. North is to the right in this image.
This image is 22x7' in Ha and 19x7' in SII, using Astronomik filters, taken with the Atik 16 through the Orion 120mm refractor at f/4 (with the WO 0.8x II fr/fr). Ha was used as luminance and mapped to red and green; SII was mapped to blue. Processing was done in Neb 2, Maxim DL 5, and PS CS3.
A few weeks ago I saw advertised on Cloudy Nights an adapter that would allow me to attach my Feathertouch focuser to an Orion 120mm f/5 achromatic refractor. I didn't own one at the time, but it occurred to me that perhaps the WO 0.8x II reducer/flattener that I do own would work with this scope, which has a focal length of 600mm. An f/5 x 0.8 would yield an f/4, and a 120mm f/4 refractor sounds like a honey of an astrograph. It could only be used for narrowband imaging, but that's all I can do when the moon is full, and it's fascinating work, anyway. I made an offer to buy the adapter, then went looking for a used scope. I found one a few days later. With adapter and scope put together, I waited for a clear night. Here we are.
