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Friday, November 9, 2012

Pickering's Triangle in Ha/OIII light




A somehow clear night for a long time!

Last night I was able to shoot O-III light (Light emitted by ionized oxygen.) for my latest project, the Pickering's Triangle in the Veil Nebula. I manged to collect three hours of O-III light, ones again clouds ruined about two hours of exposures.  I'll shoot the S-II channel (Light emitted by ionized Sulfur.), as soon as the weather supports, for a three channel color image. 


The Pickering's Triangle
A detail in the Veil Nebula supernova remnant

Two color image from H-a and O-III, image is in natural colors from narrowband channels. Emission of hydrogen can be seen as Red and emission of oxygen as Blue.


Pickering's Triangle is a small part of the Veil Nebula supernova remnant in constellation Cygnus.
Veil Nebula is a cloud of ionized gas and dust, leftovers from an exploded star. The star went off some 5000-8000 years ago at distance of about 1470 light years. This, relatively faint target, is difficult to image due to the large angular diameter, about three degrees, and a dense star field.


Orientation

Area of interest is marked as a white rectangle, the apparent size of the Moon can be seen at lower right corner. 


An animated image

This animation shows the difference between H-a and O-III emissions.
Red = Hydrogen, Blue = Oxygen. The last image shows channels combined.


An experimental starless image

Sometimes I published starless images to show the actual nebula better.


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
15 x 1200s exposures for H-alpha emission = 5h
9 x 1200s exposures for O-III, emission of ionized oxygen = 3h


Ps.

This is my second Veil Nebula detail from this Autumn season. Previous photograph, IC 1340, can be seen here: http://www.astroanarchy.blogspot.fi/2012/10/ic-1340-project-finalized.html



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