alan4908

IC5146 (aka the Cocoon Nebula) is a reflection and emission nebula about 15 light years across and 4000 light years distant. It surrounds an open star cluster which mainly consists of young stars. The central star is believed to be only 100,000 years old and powers the nebula. The nebula glows red due to the hydrogen gas being ionised by interior stars, while the blue regions are created by light from the nearby stars being reflected off the dust and gas. For this second attempt, I combined a new data set with some from 2019. This larger data set together with some new Pixinsight tools allowed me to display a deeper image. My original attempt is here: https://stargazerslounge.com/gallery/image/35093-cocoon-nebula-close-up/ The LRGB below was taken by my Esprit 150 and represents a total integration time of just over 38 hours and has a Ha blend into the red channel. The annotated image shows the location of some distant background galaxies. Alan IC5146 IC5146 (annotated) L:33, R:23, G:23, B:24 x 600s; H:42 x 1800s.

Located in Cygnus, about 3000 light years distant, NGC7027 is a very young (600 years old) planetary nebula in an early stage of its development. It is very small, c0.1 light years in diameter, with an apparent diameter of c10 arc seconds. The first component to be formed after the Big Bang, helonium, was first detected here in 2019. It is also known as the Jewel Bug nebula. The expanding halo surrounding NGC 7027 consists of concentric blue shells and is estimated to be about 3 times the mass of the Sun and 100 times more massive than the central region. The core region consists of ionised gases powered by a white dwarf star. The inner region has an irregular ellipsoidal shape with an equatorial band and high speed gas jets which give a spiky appearance. NGC 7027 is more of an observation rather than an imaging target on SGL, I couldn’t find any other images, probably due to a combination of its small apparent size and high dynamic brightness range. On the acquisition front, since the bright core of NGC 7027 causes my camera to operate in its non-linear region when using my standard 600s sub exposure time, I decided to also acquire a set of subs at 60s. To render the core area I used a color corrected high dynamic range processing script from Russ Croman (https://pixinsight.com/forum/index.php?threads/color-corrected-hdrmt.15769/). The LRGB image below was taken by my Esprit 150 and represents a total integration time of about 18 hours. Alan LIGHTS: L:40, R:20, G:17, B:22 x 600s; L:20,R:20,G:20, B:20 x 60s all at -20C.

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Yes, it does make you wonder.... Thanks - I don't normally post hi res images but in this instance I thought it needed it ! Alan

Thanks Alan

Thanks for the comment Peter. Alan

Thanks ! Glad you liked it. Thanks Rodd. It turned out a little better than I thought it would ! Thanks Thanks ....and yes you can. Well, I don't know what that but thanks for the comment.... Alan

The Hercules Cluster (Abell 2151) consists of about 200 galaxies, most have spiral designs although some elliptical structures are also present. Interestingly, many of the galaxies appear to be interacting. The blue tints indicate star formation and are mainly associated with spiral galaxies, whilst the reddish/yellow glows are associated with older stellar populations. This LRGB image represents about 9 hours integration time and was taken with my Esprit 150. Alan Abell 2151 Abell 2151 (annotated) LIGHTS: L:17, R:12, G:10, B:14 x 600s all at -20C.

Thanks for the comment ! Glad you liked it. Thanks. On the FWHM, if I take my stacked Lum image and measure the FWHM on a few stars that are on the linear portion of my camera I get around 3.5 pixels FWHM, so given that my imaging resolution is at 0.71 arc seconds per pixel, it suggests an average FWHM of 2.5 arc seconds. The AI trained deconvolution app BlurXterminator is also very impressive at improving detail. Alan

The image below shows a variety of galaxies located in Virgo, the largest three (NGC 5364, NGC 5363 and NGC 5360) are about 50 million light years distant. Fainter galaxies can also be seen in the background which lie at much greater distances, eg the Lenticular galaxy NGC 5373 is estimated to be in excess of 500 million light years distant. At the centre of the image is the grand design spiral galaxy NGC 5364. The two spiral arms are seen and contain a large number of bright blue stars. Closer inspection reveals that the arms are asymmetrical and it speculated that this distortion may be due to the gravitational interaction with the companion galaxy NGC 5363, shown near the top centre. This latter galaxy shows a dust lane perhaps created by a past merger. The view of the centre is distorted by the presence of a bright foreground star, close to the core, which is actually within the Milky Way. The smallest of the triplet is the Lenticular galaxy NGC 5360 which does not show any tidal tales. This LRGB image was acquired by my Esprit 150 and represents about 17 hours integration time. Alan LIGHTS: L:40, R:23,G:20,B:20 x 600s all at -20C.

NGC 6979 is part of the Eastern Veil Nebula and is a supernova remnant about 2400 light years distant. The bi-colour (HOO) narrowband image below was captured with my Esprit 150 and represents 19 hours integration time. Alan