Knight of Clear Skies

Would be interesting to see what you could get, I've seen one or two images showing some dust around these nebulae. But I suspect it would be difficult for the reason I give in my post above.

In infra-red, we can see IC348 is part of an enormous complex: http://viewer.legacysurvey.org/?ra=54.8166&dec=32.0311&layer=unwise-neo6&zoom=9 I think the visible part is at upper-left.

You're welcome, IC348 is one of the most beautiful objects in IR. I've been playing around a bit with optical/IR composites using data from WISE, this is my latest effort: I hope to do something similar with the Perseus and Taurus molecular clouds. With the 135mm Samyang and 6D I can just about fit in the region from the California Nebula to the Pleaides.

It's a good composition, showing those galaxies lost in space.

You don't typically see dust in images of the NA and Pelican, but this is an optical/IR composite using data from the WISE space telescope, used to survey the entire sky at infrared wavelengths. It shows that the visible nebulae are just part of a larger complex. The NA & Pelican are a single large emission nebula obscured by a central dark nebula. The hot massive star lighting up the complex, christened the Bajamar star, has recently been identified. If it wasn't shrouded by dust it would be one of the brightest stars in our sky. https://cab.inta-csic.es/en/news/escape-from-bermuda-the-ejection-of-its-massive-stars-leaves-a-stellar-cluster-orphan/49/ (The article also mentions that the Veil nebula may well have been created by a star from the same cluster hiding behind the Pelican, it's at about the same distance.) Having aligned the IR image using Registar I can blend it in at any level, I made this video to show how the ionizing star is lighting up the nebulae we recognise. I think this is the best way to present it. This is the base HaRGB image I used. The 200mm lens gives enough resolution to see the dust pillar in the head of the Pelican. This also got me thinking, why don't we see much visible dust along the plane of the Milky Way, like we do in Cepheus, Taurus or Perseus? I suspect it's because dust outside the plane of the galaxy can be illuminated by many more stars. The IFN at high polar latitudes is very tenuous but is illuminated by the entire galactic disc, whereas dust along the galactic plane is obscured by - more dust. Can anyone shed any light on this please? Where is the illumination of these dusty fields actually coming from? This image makes use of data products from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, which is a joint project of the University of California, Los Angeles, and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory/California Institute of Technology, and NEOWISE, which is a project of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory/California Institute of Technology. WISE and NEOWISE are funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. IR image credit: unWISE / NASA/JPL-Caltech / D. Lang (Perimeter Institute)

Looks good, especially good control of the stars, but I wonder if a version with the dust stretched less aggressively would be more impactful, allowing the brighter structures to stand out.

Great image, these two targets are high up my list of priorities with the Samyang 135mm, provided I can get a nice long run at them. This area is very interesting in infra-red as well, especially IC348: http://viewer.legacysurvey.org/?ra=54.9849&dec=31.8454&layer=unwise-neo6&zoom=8

You're right. The article confused me as it referred to a "neon pink glow".

Apparently there were some very rare pink aurora earlier this month, caused by ionized nitrogen at lower altitudes: https://www.livescience.com/pink-auroras-solar-storm I wonder if there were more last night?

This image is taken with the MIRI instrument, in mid-infrared the dust pillars are no longer transparent so the stars inside or behind the pillars are hidden. Also, stars aren't very bright in mid-infrared, peak emission is at shorter wavelengths. hence no large diffraction spikes.

You've made a good start. I'd recommend downloading Sequator for stacking photos taken from a fixed tripod. It's a free download (with a donation option), easy to use and more reliable than DSS. It also has options to create a mask for the foreground so it just stacks the sky, and can create stacked timelapses. I used it for the image and timelapse on this page: https://www.caradonobservatory.com/articles/viewing-the-milky-way Download page is here: https://sites.google.com/site/sequatorglobal/download I also notice some star trailing in the dome image which has been caused by movement of the camera, probably from pressing the shutter button. If you can turn on the camera timer it will help prevent that kind of thing. Good luck and I hope that's of some help.

Completed this project using the data kindly provided by the Ikarus Observatory. It's interesting to compare the morphology of M16 and M17. In both cases the expansion of the nebulae by stellar winds is restricted by concentrations of gas and dust in some directions. Objects such as the Rosette and IC1396 are much more spherical, classic Strömgren spheres, possibly because they are more evolved objects?

Created this to show where the Eagle lives in the sky. The pillars are just recognisable in this HaRGB composite taken with a 200mm lens and 1600MM cool camera. The image on the left was taken in 2020 when Jupiter and Saturn were close together. It's a three-pane stitch from horizon to zenith, and not a million miles away from what can be seen with the naked eye. (I might have at making a close to naked eye version by reducing the number of visible stars, and reducing the contrast and blurring out the Milky Way.)

I particularly like the defocussed aurora shot at the beginning and end of the video, inspired.

Visually, my first thought was Johnny-5-is-alive from Short Circuit.

That's great, shows how much is going on in an empty-looking region of space. Wonder how many of those dust clouds will burst into life in the next few million years? Where exactly in Taurus are we looking please and what's the field of view. NGC1539 is an elliptical galaxy but I'm struggling to find it in frame.

Had a short window for some imaging last Friday so had a go at a target I've always wanted to image, the Eagle nebula. Could only get a limited amount of data before it vanished into the treeline, this is 28 minutes of Ha with a 200mm f2.8 lens and 1600MM cool in 60s subs. I used the 30 second cloudy snap below for the colour starfield. Really pleased with this allowing for the short run of data and far from ideal conditions, the Ha filter can cope with quite a lot of light cloud scudding through the frame. The pillars are pretty small at this focal length but they are recognisable.

Thanks Olly. I've been playing around a bit with some basic video editing so I can get some kind of crossfade to work. The image above uses data from WISE's W1 (3.4 µm) and W2 (4.6 µm) bands, at the shorter end of the IR wavelengths. So I think it's showing relatively warm dust heated by stellar winds around areas of active star formation. The W3 and W4 bands show dust at lower temperatures and even more extended structure, but the data appears to be full or artefacts and difficult to work with.

Have you tried Registar? If you share the files I could have a quick go later to see if they will align.

This composite image uses data taken over a few decades, using two camera lenses, a 48" telescope, a DSLR, a cooled astrocam, photographic plates and a space telescope. I wanted to blend in IR data from WISE to show how this large emission nebula is an optical bubble on top of a larger structure, and how the hot stars at the centre are shaping and eroding it. The side-by-side version makes it easier to compare. Some of the stars are much brighter in IR then at optical wavelengths, either because they are giant stars with low surface temperatures, are obscured by dust or both. There are also a couple of galaxies at lower right which are almost invisible optically, Maffei 1 & 2 which were first discovered in 1967. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maffei_1 "Maffei 1 is situated at an estimated distance of 3–4 Mpc from the Milky Way. It may be the closest giant elliptical galaxy. Maffei 1 lies in the Zone of Avoidance and is heavily obscured by the Milky Way's stars and dust. If it were not obscured, it would be one of the largest (about 3/4 the size of the full moon), brightest, and best-known galaxies in the sky." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maffei_2 The HaRGB image was taken by me. I used a 200mm lens and 1600MM cool camera for the Ha (80x60s subs under a bright Moon). The starfield is a 20 second snap with the Samyang 135mm and Canon 6d. The result was a little overwhelmingly red. As I don't have an OII filter I took some data from the blue channel of the Digitized Sky Survey, originally shot on photographic plates in the 80s & 90s using the 48" Samuel Oschin and UK Schmidt telescopes and blended this in. The IR image uses data from the W1 & W2 bands from the WISE space telescope. Hope you find this interesting, any thoughts would be welcome. The Second Palomar Observatory Sky Survey (POSS-II) was made by the California Institute of Technology with funds from the National Science Foundation, the National Geographic Society, the Sloan Foundation, the Samuel Oschin Foundation, and the Eastman Kodak Corporation. The Oschin Schmidt Telescope is operated by the California Institute of Technology and Palomar Observatory. The UK Schmidt Telescope was operated by the Royal Observatory Edinburgh, with funding from the UK Science and Engineering Research Council (later the UK Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council), until 1988 June, and thereafter by the Anglo-Australian Observatory. The blue plates of the southern Sky Atlas and its Equatorial Extension (together known as the SERC-J), as well as the Equatorial Red (ER), and the Second Epoch [red] Survey (SES) were all taken with the UK Schmidt. This image makes use of data products from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, which is a joint project of the University of California, Los Angeles, and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory/California Institute of Technology, funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Great detail. The slight blurriness gives it an impression of speed.

I think reflections are the most likely cause. There are signs of something bright intruding at the edge of the upper-right frame, but there is no bright star at that location.

You're welcome, always good to see something a little different. I wonder of the rosebud will eventually open as stellar winds expel gas and dust from the centre of the nebula, and we'll see something similar to M42. Or possibly some of the obscuring dust is distant enough that it will remain obscured.

Interesting object, reminds me of NGC 1333 in Perseus. Here's an IR view from WISE: http://viewer.legacysurvey.org/?ra=325.6787&dec=66.0883&layer=unwise-neo6&zoom=9

You're welcome. I think starless versions often give a greater sense of depth which the starfield can often hide. Possibly something to do with how we perceive depth, we expect objects to blur with distance which doesn't happen with point sources.