Every day our eyes catch the light of our memories – time spent with family, the journey to work, a special holiday, a beautiful sunset or a dark starlit night. Each image captured is a picture drawn in light – a photograph: only to be lost in our minds or forever forgotten. Nearly two hundred years ago a small group of amateur scientists achieved what had eluded mankind for centuries – the ability to capture a permanent record of an image seen by their own eyes – a moment in time frozen onto a surface. They had discovered Photography. They were the ‘Catchers of the Light’.

Sunday, September 11, 2011

Elephant's Trunk nebula

The Elephant's Trunk nebula is a concentration of interstellar gas and dust in the star cluster IC 1396 – an ionized gas region located in the constellation Cepheus about 2,400 light years away from Earth.[1] The piece of the nebula shown here is the dark, dense globule IC 1396A; it is commonly called the Elephant's Trunk nebula because of its appearance at visible light wavelengths, where there is a dark patch with a bright, sinuous rim. The bright rim is the surface of the dense cloud that is being illuminated and ionized by a very bright, massive star that is just to the west of IC 1396A.The entire IC 1396 region is ionized by the massive star, except for dense globules that can protect themselves from the star's harsh ultraviolet rays.

The Elephant's Trunk nebula is now thought to be a site of star formation, containing several very young (less than 100,000 yr) stars that were discovered in infrared images in 2003. Two older (but still young, a couple of million years, by the standards of stars, which live for billions of years) stars are present in a small, circular cavity in the head of the globule. Winds from these young stars may have emptied the cavity.

The combined action of the light from the massive star ionizing and compressing the rim of the cloud, and the wind from the young stars shifting gas from the center outward lead to very high compression in the Elephant's Trunk nebula. This pressure has triggered the current generation of protostars.[2]

Instruments and exposure data:

W.O FLT110 with dedicated TMB field flattener
FeatherTouch 3'' focuser
Starizona MicroTouch autofocuser
W.O ZS80 ED
SBIG ST10XME CFW9
Meade DSI 
Filters:
Ha 5nm Astrodon


Sky-Watcher   EQ6 Pro

Ha :29*15min bin1x1

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Monday, September 5, 2011

Sharpless 171 Hubble palette



Tricolor Emission Line Image
Instruments and exposure data:

W.O FLT110 with dedicated TMB field flattener
FeatherTouch 3'' focuser
Starizona MicroTouch autofocuser
W.O ZS80 ED
SBIG ST10XME CFW9
Meade DSI 

Filters:
SII 8nm Baader Planetarium
Ha 5nm Astrodon
OIII 8.5nm Baader Planetarium

Sky-Watcher   EQ6 Pro

SII :30*15min bin1x1
Ha :30*15min bin1x1
OIII:30*15min bin1x1

Total exposure time:22h30min 

Anacortes Image of the Day 19/09/2011
Northern Galactic Image of the Month Award for September 2011
http://www.northerngalactic.com/forum/news.php








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