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, November 23, 2014

A Cosmic Tale, the W5, a radio source within the Soul nebula




The W5, a radio source within the Soul nebula, spans an area of sky equivalent to four full moons and is about 6,500 light-years away in the constellation Cassiopeia. Like other massive star-forming regions, such as Orion and Carina, W5 contains large cavities that were carved out by radiation and winds from the region's most massive stars. According to the theory of triggered star formation, the carving out of these cavities pushes gas together, causing it to ignite into successive generations of new stars. The image in the gallery above contains some of the best evidence yet for the triggered star formation theory. Scientists analyzing the photo have been able to show that the ages of the stars become progressively and systematically younger with distance from the center of the cavities.

Soul Nebula (Sharpless 2-199, LBN 667) is emission nebulae in Cassiopeia. Several small open clusters are embedded in the nebula: CR 34, 632, and 634[citation needed] (in the head) and IC1848 (in the body). The object is more commonly called by the cluster designation IC1848.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soul_Nebula#mediaviewer/File:Celestial_Valentine.jpg

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 :26*10min bin1x1 (4 hours 20 min)

Athens,
Hellas

Tuesday, November 18, 2014

Sh 2-132



Sh 2-132 is a faint emission nebula in Cepheus and lies around 10,000 light-years away.
It is illuminated by two Wolf-Rayett stars and several OB stars.

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 :46*10min bin1x1 (7 hours 40 min)

please open it in full resolution here    http://www.astrobin.com/full/136150/0/?real=&mod=       ...and enjoy

for a HST palette version please see here: http://www.astrobin.com/35012/C/

Animated presentation of successive processing steps.

clip 1 : the original Ha master frame deconvolved with LR in ccdstack
clip 2 : after Dynamic Background Extraction in pixinsight
clip 3 : after removing stars with Straton
clip 4 : high pass sharpening , local contrast tuning and noise reduction in photoshop
clip 5 : the final image with stars back, in their positions!!!!!

Sunday, November 9, 2014

NGC 2244


Instruments and exposure data:
W.O FLT110 with dedicated TMB field flattener and FeatherTouch 3'' focuser
Filter Astrodon 5nm
SBIG ST10XME CFW9
Starizona MicroTouch autofocuser
EQ6
Hα:20*5min(bin1x1) total 1h40min

The Rosette Nebula is a large, circular H II region located near one end of a giant molecular cloud in the Monoceros region of the Milky Way Galaxy. The open cluster NGC 2244 is closely associated with the nebulosity, the stars of the cluster having been formed from the nebula's matter.
The cluster and nebula lie at a distance of some 5,200 light years from Earth (although estimates of the distance vary considerably) and measure roughly 130 light years in diameter. The radiation from the young stars excite the atoms in the nebula, causing them to emit radiation themselves producing the emission nebula we see. The mass of the nebula is estimated to be around 10,000 solar masses.
It is believed that stellar winds from a group of O and B stars are exerting pressure on interstellar clouds to cause compression, followed by star formation in the nebula. This star formation is currently still ongoing.
A survey of the nebula with the Chandra X-ray Observatory in 2001 has revealed the presence of very hot, young stars at the core of the Rosette Nebula. These stars have heated the surrounding gas to a temperature in the order of 6 million kelvins causing them to emit copious amounts of X-rays.

Monday, November 3, 2014

SH2-124 Pseudo RGB


Pseudo RGB attempt, from emmision line data Ha_SII_OIII
Red=Ha_ Green=SII_ Blue= OIII

HISTORY = COMBINE: RGB created from the following SOURCEs
HISTORY = SOURCE0: Mean SH2-124 HaALL Deconvolved
HISTORY = SOURCE1: Mean SH2_SIIALL  Deconvolved
HISTORY = SOURCE2: Mean sh2-124_OIIIALL Deconvolved
HISTORY = RGB color ratios: [1,36:0,48:1,16]
SAT_LEVE= 50000
FILESRC = 'FITS'
HISTORY = DECONVOLVE: Iterations = 30