M57 Ring

[drjolo]

It's been already 6 years since I imaged M57 for the first time with 6" newtonian and DSLR - I was a little bit disappointed then  This time I was prepared a little bit better and collected some subframes over three short May and June nights. It is about 5 hours of total exposures over Ha and LRGB filters. I wanted to reveal nebula outer halo and it worked, however I found it quite faint. It was barely visible in 50 minutes luminance stack, but Ha narrowband subframes helped. This halo was discovered in 1935 and most probably it contains stellar wind that was emitted before the nebula was born. 

Thanks for watching!

Edited June 18, 2018 by drjolo

[Z3roCool]

Fantastic!

[carastro]

Great result.  Yes it is very faint.  There is actually an outer outer halo which is even more faint.  

Carole 

Edited June 19, 2018 by carastro

[wimvb]

Very nice! And quite a few faint galaxies in the background as well. ? ? ?

[Star101]

Great image Lucas.

Well done.

I have imaged M57 before but never managed the outer halo. I must try for this next time.

Thanks for sharing.

[drjolo]

Thanks!

Yes, indeed some galaxies have been captured, and some of them are not identified in PGC catalogue:

[Demonperformer]

Nice one, Lucas. Do you intend adding any OIII into the mix?

[drjolo]

Thanks! Hmm, I didn't plan to add Oiii - the Ring itself is bright enough for RGB only. But maybe it is worth to check the outer shell if it shines in Oiii... ?

[drjolo]

I got back to M57 one year later - this time with narrowband data only. Seeing was decent, but transparency was far from perfect and also Moon was present. So outer halo has not been captured. 

Anyway, here it is M57 in narrowband bicolor only:

 

And both narrowband channels 

Meade ACF 10", CCDT67, QHY163M, EQ6,  Ha 120x2 minutes, Oiii 90x2 minutes (gain 100), seeing good, transparency moderate, Moon present.

[wimvb]

Very nice. It is very difficult to get good Oiii data with the moon about.

What was your total integration time this year? The image from last year showed more of the outer shells, which does a lot to make the image.

[drjolo]

Thanks Wim, this year it was 4 hours of Ha and 3 hours of Oiii. So the amount of data for Ha is similar to last year, but I suspect the Moon light swallowed outer shells even in Ha band. These outer halo is really faint, I think at my location it requires about 10 hours of Ha exposure without Moon to achieve good result.

Edited June 7, 2019 by drjolo

[wimvb]

I also expect the Oiii background to be very noisy. Moonlight & "bright" summer nights make for a lot of blue, which interferes mainly with the Oiii. Even Ha will pick up some sky light, unless you have 3 nm astrodons.

[kirkster501]

Wow,. that is superb Lucas!  Well done!  I am going to give this a go as well with my Meade 14"and plan on lots of 3x3 binned Ha to get the outer Halo.  That is, if it ever clears up here in the UK of course 🙄

[sloz1664]

That is a brilliant result Lucas. I found with M57 that getting the exposure times right is crucial.

Steve

[sloz1664]

12 hours ago, kirkster501 said:

Wow,. that is superb Lucas!  Well done!  I am going to give this a go as well with my Meade 14"and plan on lots of 3x3 binned Ha to get the outer Halo.  That is, if it ever clears up here in the UK of course 🙄

You will enjoy imaging M57 Steve, especially with that 14" photon hoover you have recently obtained  You will be surprised how easily the images can overexpose especially in the RGB images.

Steve