M67,Twice (12-2012 to 2-2013)

 Full resolution image here.

There is a time during the night in December through February when bright targets are not too plentiful.  This one, M67, is one of the few.  In between working on dimmer targets, I took some frames of M67.  We see M67 in the constellation Cancer.

M67 is an open cluster of stars that is between 2,500 and 3,000 light years away.  Its age is between 3.5 and 5 billion years.  Our Sun is about 5 billion years old, we believe.  The Sun and M67 are moving in the same general direction through space in our Milky Way Galaxy.  Some have speculated that our Sun was once a member of the cluster, though later studies (such as here) make this seem unlikely.

Regardless, M67 is a beautiful open cluster in a telescope.  No image really captures the beauty of the stars, but these remind me of the cluster.

The first was taken with the AT111EDT, a refractor.  The spikes were placed on the stars with software.  I think they are subtle and give the stars a bit of sparkle.  That image leads the three because it most nicely frames the cluster.  Here is the same image without the spikes:

Full resolution image here.

And here is one taken through the Orion 254mm f/4.7 Newtonian.  In this image, the spikes are part of the star shapes created by the telescope.  The color for the Newtonian image comes from the Palomar and AAO Digital Sky Survey II, publicly available on the web.  Thanks to Dick Locke for generously sharing a color-balanced sample image.

Full resolution image here.

Telescope: Astro-Tech AT111EDT and William Optics P-FLAT4 (eff. at f/5.6)
Camera and Exposure: SXVF-H9C; L (15x180"), R (6x300"), G (7x300"), B (7x300"); Alnitak Flat-man flats
Filter: Astronomik CLS and RGB filters
Guiding: SX Lodestar and SX OAG
Mount: Takahashi NJP
Software: Nebulosity, Maxim DL, Registar, Photoshop CS3
Location: The Woodlands, TX 

Telescope: Orion 254mm f/4.7 Newtonian and RCC I
Camera and Exposure: SXVF-H9 (L: 9x240"), T-shirt flats
Filter: IDAS LPS-P2
Guiding: SX Lodestar and SX OAG
Mount: Takahashi NJP
Software: Nebulosity, Maxim DL, Registar, Photoshop CS3
Location: The Woodlands, TX

NGC 2244 & the Rosette Nebula Center, Bi-Color (Dec. & Jan, 2012-13)

Link to full resolution image.

Here is my recent NGC 2244 and Rosette data arranged as a bi-color.  In this rendition, I have mixed the Ha [+NII] data with SII at a 2:1 ratio.  These wavelengths, which fall in the red part of the spectrum, became Red.  Blue in this image comprises OIII and Ha data mixed at 4:1, and Green comprises OIII and SII data mixed at 4:1.  The color strengths were adjusted after combination to emphasize the difference between red and blue, so the contrast visible here is between Ha, NII, and SII, on the one hand, and OIII on the other, red v. blue-green.  Capture data for this image appears in the Hubble palette post for this object, dated February 4, 2013.  The telescope used was the AT111EDT, the camera the SXVF-H9.

NGC 2244 and the Rosette Nebula Center (Dec. & Jan. 2012-13)

Link to a full resolution image.

This is the center of the Rosette Nebula, a fascinating place.  The squall line of dust and gas clouds in the upper left (northwest) is being slowing washed away by stellar winds from the brilliant O stars in the cluster NGC 2244, which occupies the middle of the image.  In fact, the cluster has blown a hole in the middle of the cloud, which is why the background in the middle of the image is dimmer than the surrounding sky.  And the loops and filaments throughout the image add intrigue and color.  Also, notice some stars here appear distinctly yellow.  In this color scheme, those stars glow far more brightly in ionized sulphur than in ionized hydrogen or oxygen, and that in itself is a cool fact.

The Rosette is also famous for harboring Herbig-Haro objects.  The most famous of these is just to the left (north) of the brightest star in my image, and faintly visible, but more visible in this brightened and more contrasty cut from the Ha [+NII] image:

My image is processed roughly in the Hubble palette, which means green for Ha, blue for OIII, and red for SII.  I've modified the weighting of the colors slightly to boost contrast and (I hope) aesthetics.

Telescope: Astro-Tech AT111EDT and William Optics P-FLAT4 (eff. at f/5.6)
Camera and Exposure: SXVF-H9C; Ha [+NII] 10x15', OIII 11x20', SII 12x20'; Alnitak Flat-man flats
Filter: Astronomik 12nm narrowband filters
Guiding: SX Lodestar and SX OAG
Mount: Takahashi NJP
Software: Nebulosity, Maxim DL, Registar, Photoshop CS3
Location: The Woodlands, TX

IC 410 (Jan. 6, 2013)

Link to the full resolution image.

This just 6x20'.  I was waiting for something else to come up over the trees.  I have to admit I do like this nebula and cluster, though.  The cluster's stars appear in loops or banks of stars moving away from a roughly central point.  I'd bet this is a leftover from some facet of the cluster's formation.  I also like the tadpoles, of course.  And I enjoy thinking how much hydrogen (and nitrogen, perhaps) is glowing here, certainly more than I can frame with this system.

Telescope: Astro-Tech AT111EDT and William Optics P-FLAT4 (eff. at f/5.6)
Camera and Exposure: SXVF-H9C (6x1200"), Alnitak Flat-man flats
Filter: Astronomik 12nm Ha [+NII]
Guiding: SX Lodestar and SX OAG
Mount: Takahashi NJP
Software: Nebulosity, Maxim DL, Photoshop CS3
Location: The Woodlands, TX

NGC 1999, the Keyhole Nebula (Dec. 12, 2012)

This is NGC 1999, the Keyhole Nebula.  It is a reflection nebula lit by the star on the right edge of the lower part of the keyhole.  The nebula is so bright there that it is difficult to see the star separately from the nebula.

The interesting thing about the Keyhole Nebula is that it is actually a hole.  Many dark spots seen against a brighter nebular background are cold clouds of gas and dust.  Not so the Keyhole, apparently.  The keyhole feature appears actually to be a hole.  Deep images with a variety of infrared scopes (reported here) show that in the keyhold feature there lurks ... nothing.  What blasted a hole through this patch of otherwise brightly lit cloud?  That is a mystery, but the area is full of young stars just beginning stellar life.  Perhaps one of them blasted a tunnel right through.

Mine is not a deep image.  Surrounding the blue reflection nebula is a lot more gas and dust that is not lit up so brightly with reflected light.  Some more interesting objects my image only begins to show are also brighter in other pictures of the region.  You can see some of them in Adam Block's image, here, taken with a much larger scope from the top of a very dark mountain.  In my image you can see just a hint of these other things in the reddish background and in the red glowing objects just to the right of the Keyhole Nebula.

Telescope: Orion 254mm f/4.7 Newtonian and RCC I
Camera and Exposure: SXVF-H9 (R: 9x240"; B: 10x240" (synthetic green)), T-shirt flats
Filter: Astronomik RB, IDAS-LPS2
Guiding: SX Lodestar and SX OAG
Mount: Takahashi NJP
Software: Nebulosity, Maxim DL, Registar, Photoshop CS3
Location: The Woodlands, TX

Rosette Nebula and NGC 2244 (Dec. 17, 2012)

Link to full resolution here.

The Rosette is a grand sight.  I have seen it in binoculars from the mountains near Reno, NV, but the nebula's relatively low surface brightness makes it a challenge visually from the city.  This is just the central area.  It's fascinating for its dark clumps of dust and gas in the upper left, the bubble carved out of the middle by the hot stars of the cluster NGC 2244, and the loops and filaments throughout.

This is second light with the AT111EDT.  This is just H-alpha.  I hope to go back for OIII and perhaps SII in the coming months.

Telescope: Astro-Tech AT111EDT and William Optics P-FLAT4 (eff. at f/5.6)
Camera and Exposure: SXVF-H9C (10x900"), Alnitak Flat-man flats
Filter: Astronomik 12nm Ha [+NII]
Guiding: SX Lodestar and SX OAG
Mount: Takahashi NJP
Software: Nebulosity, Maxim DL, Photoshop CS3
Location: The Woodlands, TX

M1 (Dec. 12, 2012)

Link to full resolution image here.

In 1054 A.D. , Chinese astronomers noted a new star in the sky.  It shone so brightly that folks could see it in the daytime.  But the star was temporary.  In fact, it was not a new star at all but an old star that exploded.  This nebula is the result of that explosion.  M1 is a supernova remnant.  It is one of the coolest deep sky objects in the heavens.

Why so cool?  Well, first, this is one of the few deep sky objects whose origin was observed by human beings, and it's been growing ever since.  Most objects in the sky change very slowly by our time scale, but not this one.  In fact, some amateur astronomers have observed changes in M1 in their own images over time.

Second, M1 is not just a supernova remnant.  It is the home of what is left of the star that exploded.  The core of the supernova did not have enough mass to become a black hole, so it stopped just short of that and became a neutron star.  Within it, gravity's power has overcome the forces that create space within atoms, crushing the elements away.  What is left is a ball of neutrons only 15-18 miles wide that contains more mass than the Sun!  Pretty heavy stuff!

But there is more.  The neutron star and its interactions with its immediate environment produce more than just visible light.  Radio waves, x-rays, and gamma rays all stream out of the center of M1.  See NASA's combined optical and x-ray image of the center of M1 here.  The neutron star's intense radiation causes this to happen.

Even more remarkably, the neutron star is spinning very quickly.  It's strong electromagnetic field concentrates the radio waves into pulses that tick like a clock in space.  When astronomers first heard it, its regularity suggested that astronomers were receiving a signal from aliens.  But theorists later determined how a neutron star could produce such pulses.  We call such a spinning neutron star a pulsar.

The pulsar itself is visible in this image.  At the center of the nebula are two stars, easily visible next to each other.  The pulsar is the dimmer of the two, on the right.  We may not have a picture of a black hole yet, but we have images of the next closest thing.  How cool is that?

This image is a combination of (1) a stack of frames taken through an H-alpha filter with (2) a short color image I took a year ago through the same telescope.  I have simply slapped the color over the H-alpha image.  Here is the H-alpha alone:

Here is the capture data for the H-alpha image:
Telescope: Orion 254mm f/4.7 Newtonian and RCC I
Camera and Exposure: SXVF-H9 (H-alpha: 10x900"), T-shirt flats
Filter: Astronomik 12nm Ha
Guiding: SX Lodestar and SX OAG
Mount: Takahashi NJP
Software: Nebulosity, Maxim DL, Registar, Photoshop CS3
Location: The Woodlands, TX

The color data is described here.