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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.

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Monday, September 30, 2013

Visions of space



This is one of my artworks based on an original astronomical photograph shot be me.
Image belongs to a large series of unpublished images called  Visions.


Vision

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This image is based on my original astronomical image of  IC 1340 in Eastern Veil Nebula.
Blog post about the IC 1340 can be seen HERE.





Sunday, September 29, 2013

Three experimental starless Oxygen emission images of the Veil nebula



I played with my older material, since the weather doesn't allow new projects.

This time I'm publishing three images of light emitted by an ionized Oxygen, O-III.
Images are closeups from the large supernova remnant in a constellation Cygnus, the Veil Nebula.
I wanted to see and show the actual structure of the nebula, due to that, stars are removed from each image.

Blue Lightning
Filaments in the Western Veil, Witch's Broom Nebula

A starless O-III channel. There is a one bright star left behind due to composition reasons.
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Blue Wing
A detail of the Veil Nebula, The Pickering's Triangle

A starless O-III channel
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An electric Nike of Samothrace
IC 1340 in Eastern veil Nebula

A starless O-III channel. Why the name "Nike of Samothrace"? Please have a look HERE.
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Original images with all the data


Witch's Broom Nebula

Image is in visual spectrum from  from the emission of ionized elements.
A light emitted by the ionized Oxygen can be seen as blue hues.
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The Pickering's Triangle

Image is in mapped colors, from the emission of ionized elements, R=Sulfur, G=Hydrogen and B=Oxygen.
A light emitted by the ionized Oxygen can be seen as blue hues.
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IC 1340

Image is in mapped colors, from the emission of ionized elements, R=Sulfur, G=Hydrogen and B=Oxygen.
A light emitted by the ionized Oxygen can be seen as blue hues.
Buy a photographic print from HERE

Orientation

The areas of interest are marked as a white rectangle. The circle, size of the full Moon, shows the apparent scale in lower right corner.
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Friday, September 27, 2013

Cygnus Trio


Since the weather dosen's support imaging, I extracted an other individual image out of the large Cygnus mosaic. This image shows the same area, than my first ever APOD image, back from the year 2008.



Cygnus Trio
Butterfly, Crescent and the Tulip Nebula

Click for a large image, Note. 1900 pixels and 2,5MB.
Image is in mapped colors, from the emission of ionized elements, R=Sulfur, G=Hydrogen and B=Oxygen.

Image is shot with the Canon EF 200mm f1.8 camera optics, QHY9 a cooled astrocam and the Baader narrowband filter set, H-a, S-II and O-III. There are four individual panels, each panel is shot three times with different filter for the color image. Total exposure time is around 20h. 

An experimental starless image

I made this image to show some very faint nebula formations under the extremely dense star field.




Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Autumn season 2013 opened finally!



Last night I was able to open up my imaging season. After six months mandatory summer pause, it's great to be back!
As usually, this first light for the season is more like a test shot. I need to re collimate my optical path and fine tune my gears for optimal image quality.

A closeup of the Butterfly Nebula
First light for the Autumn season 2013

Image is in mapped colors, from the emission of ionized elements, R=Sulfur, G=Hydrogen and B=Oxygen.

Image in visual spectrum



Orientation

Butterfly Nebula in constellation Cygnus. This wide field image is taken with Canon EF 200mm f1.8 camera optics, QHY9 astro camera and Baader narrowband fiters. Colors in new detail image are from this photo.
Area of interest is marhed with a white rectangle. More info about this image in HERE.

Technical details:

Processing work flow:
Image acquisition, MaxiDL v5.07.
Stacked and calibrated in CCDStack2.
Deconvolution with a CCDStack2 Positive Constraint, 33 iterations, added at 33 % weight
Levels, curves and color combine in PS CS3.

Optics, Meade LX200 12"
Camera, QHY9
Guiding, Starlight Express active optics unit, SXV-AO, and lodestar guider.
Image Scale, ~0,75 arcseconds/pixel
H-alpha 7x1200s, Binned 1x1 = 3h 20min.
O-III and S-II channels are from an older wide field image  HERE.

A single calibrated 20min. H-alpha light frame

Image is calibrated with darks and a bias corrected flats. No other processing but nonlinear stretching.