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Monday, January 30, 2012

"What?" Project finalized



"?"


Image in HST-palette from ionized elements, Red=Sulfur, Green=Hydrogen & Blue=Oxygen. 
North is Right. Click for a large image!

I shot data for ionized Sulfur and Oxygen last night and now I can compose a three channel RGB-image.
This cosmic question mark, in constellation Cepheus, contains following objects; At top, Cederblad 214(Ced 214) surrounded by NGC 7822, a dot like nebula at the bottom is known as Sharpless 170,(Sh2-170). Image spans over Five degrees vertically. Distance from my observatory, is ~2750 light years and it spans about 40 light years.

Total exposure time is about 9h with an ultra fast Canon EF 200mm f1.8 optics and the QHY9 astronomical camera.

EDIT.

This image get selected as a Space Picture of the Week by the National Geographic magazine. 
You can see the story HERE




Couple of closeups to show the resolution
Not bad for a 200mm camera lens





A natural color composition
From emission of ionized elements

Narrow band channels combined to a visual spectrum, R=Hydrogen + Sulfur, G=Oxygen and 
B=Oxygen + Hydrogen. North is Right.
Note! 
A gray circle, at top Right, shows the apparent size of the full Moon.
(Moon has an angular size of 30', that's 0,5 degrees)


Technical details:

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

Optics, Canon EF 200mm camera lens at f1.8
Camera, QHY9
Guiding, Meade LX200 GPS 12" and a Lodestar guider
Image Scale, ~5,5 arcseconds/pixel
Exposures, Baader 7nm H-a, 13x1200s + 10x900s = 7h
O-III 1h and S-II 1h, total 9 hours.
Calibration with Darks, Flats and Bias frames.




Sunday, January 29, 2012

What?


"?"

A gray scale image of the Hydrogen alpha emission line. Click for a large image!

For a long time we have had clear weather, freezing too. I have spent couple of night shooting some new material. This cosmic question mark, in constellation Cepheus, contains following objects; At top, Cederblad 214 (Ced 214) surrounded by NGC 7822, a dot like nebula at the bottom is known as Sharpless 170,(Sh2-170).  Image spans about three and half degrees vertically. 

Total exposure time is about 7h with an ultra fast Canon EF 200mm f1.8 optics and the QHY9 astronomical camera. I'll shoot other channels, emission of Oxygen and Sulfur, later, for a color image.


Technical details:

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

Optics, Canon EF 200mm camera lens at f1.8
Camera, QHY9
Guiding, Meade LX200 GPS 12" and a Lodestar guider
Image Scale, ~4,5 arcseconds/pixel
Exposures, Baader 7nm H-a, 13x1200s + 10x900s
Calibration with Darks, Flats and Bias frames.


Monday, January 23, 2012

Large print out of the Cygnus nebulae




A framed photograph of the Cygnus Nebulae and my beautiful wife, Anna, as a scale.

The size of the picture is 100 x 170cm (39,4 x 67 inch). It has been printed on acid free premium satin photo paper with a HP Z3200, 12 color, photo printer. I'm very happy with the quality of the print. Original file is so large and detailed, that the image is very sharp and all the stars are absolute pinpoints from edge to edge. I have calculated, that I can print out a sharp copy at size of about 3 x 5m, if I want!

I found the frame, seen in the picture, from a local Framing shop, it's an old, late 1800, gilded wooden frame. The print is then made to match to sizes of the frame. The result looks like an old Baroque painting.

Original image, in the picture above, can be found here with technical details:


Ps.
The frame and framing are bought from Taide ja Kehys Jokela.
The print job is done by the Artwall.




Sunday, January 22, 2012

A panorama from Simeis 147 to IC 405 & 410




Panoramic image from a constellation Taurus

A three panel mosaic in HST-palette from  ionized elements, Red=Sulfur, Green=Hydrogen & Blue=Oxygen. North is Right.

Image above spans about ten degrees, 600', sky horizontally, that's an area of 20 full Moons side by side. 
At Left, a supernova remnant Simeis 147 (Sharpless 240). IC 405 and 410 can be seen at Right. I shot three relatively short exposures for the panorama, about an hour each, since I had shot both main objects earlier at Autumn 2011, with much longer integration time. (Technical details can be seen at end of this post.)
Total exposure time for Hydrogen alpha alone is about 20h.


Panorama as a natural color composition

Narrowband channels combined to a visual spectrum, R=Hydrogen + Sulfur, G=Oxygen and B=Oxygen + Hydrogen. Image is in real orientation in the sky, North is up.


Technical details:

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

Optics, Canon EF 200mm camera lens at f1.8
Camera, QHY9
Guiding, Meade LX200 GPS 12" and a Lodestar guider
Image Scale, ~4,5 arcseconds/pixel
H-a for three panels 3h.

Exposures for the Simeis 147

H-alpha 34x900s, Binned 1x1
H-alpha 14x1800s, Binned 1x1
Total exposure time for Hydrogen alpha is ~13h
O-III & S-II channels are from an older image, it can be seen here

Exposures for IC 405 & 410

New exposures H-alpha 13x900s,
S-II and O-III information are from an older image

Total exposure time for Hydrogen, ~20h

Friday, January 13, 2012

Cygnus zoom in series




Weather, up here 65N, doesn't give any support so I made an other zoom in series.
This time I'm zooming from 23x14 to 0,5x0,7 degrees of sky at the are of NGC 7000 in Cygnus.
Older series can be seen in my portfolio: http://astroanarchy.zenfolio.com/p162076373

I have shot many targets with several focal lengths. 
Due that, I will publish some of my material as an image sets, with different field of view and detail levels.
The fractal nature of our universe stands out nicely by this way and it will make the orientation more easy.

Many times, it's difficult to understand the image scale of astronomical images.
Due that, I will add a Moon circle in some of the images to show the angular scale in a sky. 
The full Moon has an angular size of ~30 arc minutes, that's equal to ~0,5 degrees.


Cygnus zoom in series, a study of the apparent scale in the sky.
Note. The apparent size of the full Moon is marked as a gray circle at lover Right corner.

Images are in mapped colors from emission of ionized elements, R=Sulfur, G=Hydrogen & B=Oxygen.

Location in the Sky, star map overlay



Images used in this series:

A giant, 18-panels, mosaic of the Cygnus constellation with 200mm canon EF at f1.8:
http://astroanarchy.blogspot.com/2011/12/cygnus-mosaic-18-panels-and-22-x-14.html

North America and Pelican Nebulae with 300mm Tokina AT-X at f2.8:
http://astroanarchy.blogspot.com/2011/11/ngc-7000-north-america-pelican-nebulae.html

Closeup of North America Nebula with Meade LX 200 GPS, reduced to f5 ~2000mm:
 http://astroanarchy.blogspot.com/2010/09/ngc-7000-closeup-hst-palette-preview.html






Sunday, January 8, 2012

Cygnus collection as a poster




Treasures of Cygnus 


I made a collection out of my images from the Cygnus constellation.
At center lays a giant 18-panels mosaic of Cygnus nebulae as a natural color composition. Surrounding closeup images, seen in large central mosaic,  are in HST-palette. All images are shot with the Baader narrow band filter set, H-alpha, S-II & O-III. 
Original, full resolution, poster has a massive size, ~21.000 x 16.000 pixels!

All images used in this presentation, with technical details and labels, can be found from my portfolio at: 



Ps.
This mid winter has been worst I can remember up here 65N... Over two Months 100% cloud cover and it doesn't look any better in near future either. Very frustrating. 



Friday, January 6, 2012

A video from Autumn 2011 images




Autumn season 2011



Three minute video, 640x480 pixels, from my images of Autu mn 2011.
(If you have a slow connection, please, hit the pause and wait movie to load)

Here is a direct link to my main work from last Autumn, a giant 18-panel mosaic of Cygnus nebulae:
http://astroanarchy.blogspot.com/2011/12/cygnus-mosaic-18-panels-and-22-x-14.html