Jump to content

Banner.jpg.b83b14cd4142fe10848741bb2a14c66b.jpg

vdB 15 Sh2-202 in Camelopardalis

Barry-Wilson

By Barry-Wilson
in Imaging - Deep Sky

Recommended Posts

Barry-Wilson

Barry-Wilson

Posted
Posted

This has been a challenging target both to collect the data and process. It is very faint and late December conditions in Devon, UK, have not been very favourable for long image capture sessions (evening low level fog) and I have grabbed the data whenever I've had a clear patch. I tried some 600s subs but had to discard these due to gradients, perhaps I will try again on another occasion. There was a lot of work stretching the tenuous reflection nebula and encouraging the surrounding emission nebula to reveal its subtle pinky-red colouring, all without blowing (too much) the abundant stars.  Some Ha data may well help here.

I think this target is frequently overlooked for its more famous and rewarding neighbours, the Soul and Heart nebulas. I am (mostly) satisfied with this image for now.

Thanks for looking, C&Cs always welcome.

Details:

  • WO FLT132 at F5.6
  • GM1000HPS
  • QSI683-wsg with Astrodon filters
  • Lum 36 x 300s; R 24 x 300s; G 21 x 300s; B 26 x 300s for a total of 8.9hrs
  • SGP and PI

VdB15_LRGBComb.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Barry-Wilson

Barry-Wilson

Posted
  • Author
Posted
43 minutes ago, PhotoGav said:

Loving the star colours across this one Barry.

Thanks Gav - the benefit of sufficient RGB as we recently discussed.  Soemtimes work is required to recover the colour in the star core, I use the HSV script in PI and sometimes convolution with a tight star mask.

22 minutes ago, StuartJPP said:

Nice one Barry, it has been a bit trying recently...I like the forgotten objects or the less frequently imaged ones.

Cheers Stuart.  Interesting to read that you have a 135mm lens too.  Would be good with your setup.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Barry-Wilson

Barry-Wilson

Posted
  • Author
Posted

Thanks Dave - glad you are up and running.  I've just downloaded Michel's new MountWizzard for modelling, which links directly to SGP rather than Per's MM with MaximDL.  Per was working on a new version to link to SGP before he passed away - such a tragedy.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Barry-Wilson

Barry-Wilson

Posted
  • Author
Posted

Thanks Ian.  It would be easy to succomb to pushing the data too hard on this image as it is faint and only subtly reveals its beauty.  Neither is there too much structure to the nebula and over application of PI tools would create artificial texture I hazard.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Tom OD

Tom OD

Posted
Posted

Very nice Barry,

This is a very tricky object. I did this at Ollys, and I had to get about 15 hours of Luminance to be able to get a decent signal from it. You ve done well with this.

I'm not even sure I could find Camelparodalis again. It took me three days to learn how to pronounce it.

Tom.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
ChrisLX200

ChrisLX200

Posted
Posted

Looks great to me Barry! Personal choice would be the colours - appears perhaps a little magenta-ish on my monitor? Rather than the ruddy browns in the dust clouds I mean :) Still love the detail you captured and also the blue reflection nebula which must be tricky to reveal even under the best of conditions.

ChrisH

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Barry-Wilson

Barry-Wilson

Posted
  • Author
Posted
16 hours ago, Tom OD said:

It took me three days to learn how to pronounce it.

Tom.

Thanks Tom.  When I read your comment last night it had me chuckling over my cup of tea! I know exactly what you mean :icon_biggrin:.

Thanks John, Pete and Chris for your comments.

12 hours ago, ChrisLX200 said:

Looks great to me Barry! Personal choice would be the colours - appears perhaps a little magenta-ish on my monitor? Rather than the ruddy browns in the dust clouds I mean :) Still love the detail you captured and also the blue reflection nebula which must be tricky to reveal even under the best of conditions.

ChrisH

There isn't too much written on the web about vdB15 (and vdB14) but from what I can glean the immediately adjacent emission nebula is faintly red (much less so than more distant and off to the Soul).

From Steve Cannistra's website Starry Wonders: "This beautiful pair of reflection nebulae are a small part of a large dust cloud in Camelopardalis.  They contain both reflection (blue) and emission (red) components, although the emission component is subtle and can be seen as the peripheral pale red regions in the above LRGB image.  VDB 15 is the large nebula on the left, surrounding the magnitude 5 central star C Cam, while VDB14 is the sickle-shaped nebula on the right, next to the magnitude 4 star B Cam (to its lower right).  What makes this image one of my favorites is the widefield views, available in the links above.  The abundant, colorful stars in this field are very dramatic, and there is an occasional hint of blue nebulosity surrounding some of them (see the star in the lower right on the widefield views).  In addition, the widefield view makes it easy to appreciate an obvious drop off in star density on the left hand side of the image (due to intervening dust)."

From Don Goldman's Astrodon site, Don describes thus:

"Description

vdB 15 (and neighboring vdB 14) are elongated reflection nebula in Camelopardalis, each extending for ~0.8 degree in the N-S direction. They are both illuminated by two supergiant stars, HD 21291 (B9 Ia) and HD 21389 (A0 Ia) as part of the large Cam OB1 association at a distance of ~3,000 light years - an area of new star formation. vdB 15 (and 14) are classified as refleciton nebula. However, there is a strong red component in the cloud structure and as a result, the object has a pink hue. This could possibly be from extended red emission from H-a emitting stars in the general vicinity, similar to IC59 and IC63. Although I am not skilled in making mosaics (as the following image demonstrates), I realized after imaging vdB 14 and 15 that I could take another LRGB image and fill in the space between the two objects. The additional image was 4 hours LRGB. PixInsight 1.6 and Photoshop were used to stitch the 3 panes together and blend the images. If I knew in advance that I wanted to make a mosaic, I would have rotated the frames in a way that would produce a long, continuous image. I hope you don't mind the jagged edges, but if it is any comfort, this is typical of many published Hubble Space Telescope mosaic images."
 
I have to say that colour calibration was a nighmare and I made 3 or 4 attempts before I was satisified.  I was placing the background preview in the wrong location and as a consequence losing all of the subtle pink hue.  One great benefit of the web is looking at images of the 'masters' and having reference to an accepted rendition (with the due caveat that we could all be perpetuating a misconception of course; cue Sara's AN article).
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

Go to topic listing

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue. By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use.