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Tuesday, December 25, 2012

A detail from the Heart nebula



Have planned to shoot this detail for years. A pillar like formation at the North East corner of the IC 1805, the Heart Nebula. This is a very dim target, there is 8h of h-alpha emission captured and it's at a limit to be enough to show this object. 


An unnamed object in IC 1805
Ra 02h 39m 43s Dec +61° 54′ 04″ Image is shot at 21.12.2012

Colors are mapped to a HST-palette, R=Sulfur, G=Hydrogen and B=Oxygen


An experimental starless image

This image shows just the nebulosity


Image in visual colors

Natural color composition from the emission of ionized elements, R=80%Hydrogen+20%Sulfur, G=100%Oxygen and B=85%Oxygen+15%Hydrogen to compensate otherwise missing H-beta emission. This composition is very close to a visual spectrum.


Orientation in IC 1805

Area of interest is marked with a white rectangle. The angular size is about 0,5 degrees. (Same as a Moon)



A two frame mosaic

This target was partly overlapping with my previous imaging project in IC 1805,
  the Melotte 15so I was able to build a two frame mosaic.



Technical details

Processing work flow:
Image acquisition, MaxiDL v5.07.
Stacked and calibrated in CCDStack2.
Levels, curves and color combine in PS CS3.

Optics, Meade LX200 GPS 12" @ f5
Camera, QHY9
Guiding, SXV-AO, an active optics unit, and Lodestar guide camera 8Hz
Image Scale, ~0,8 arc-seconds/pixel
24 x 1200s exposures for the H-alpha, emission of ionized Hydrogen = 8h
Narrowband cahnnels for ionized Oxygen and Sulfur are taken from an older wide field image.


A single 20 min. exposure
Image is just calibrated, linearly stretched and scaled down.

 As can be seen here, this is a very dim target! The pillar like object is barely visible at the image center above.




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