Flaming Star Region in Auriga (with a little help from Samuel Oschin)

[Knight of Clear Skies]

I've been playing around with HaRGB imaging, combining a fairly deep Ha image with a very quick colour starfield.  This is the result of my latest effort.

This was taken with the Samyang 135mm f2 lens. The Ha image was about 40 minutes of data using the 1600MM cool while the colour starfield is just a couple of 30 second DSLR shots stitched together in ICE. This approach gives a nice sparse starfield which doesn't overwhelm the DSO. Registar makes it easy to align the two images and blend in the Ha, after I used Starnet++ to remove the stars from the Ha image.

The wider version covers 15 degrees of sky, most of the constellation of Auriga. I like this as it bridges with the naked eye view. But unfortunately I don't have Ha data for this entire area, so it is missing some extended nebulosity.

The other thing that was missing was the blue nebulosity from the Flaming Star. So I called in the Samuel Oschin telescope for a little help.

I used this site to download the blue plate from the POSS2 survey for the area around AE Auriga.

After I aligned with Registar I then ran Starnet++ on it to remove the stars, and blended it mostly into the blue channel using Photoshop.

I'm happy with the result, I think it's good for what it is - a limited amount of data at a short focal length. This could be a good technique for UK imaging and other locations with fickle weather, the f2 lens goes deep quite quickly. I also found it enjoyable to work with the data, Ha is always easy to process with I didn't have to fight the stars which tend to bloat when the image is stretched. It also means I don't have to worry about guiding or calibration frames. I also enjoy liberating some old data from the sky surveys which I believe was originally taken on photographic plates.

My next step might be to blend in some data from the WISE space telescope to make a visual/IR composite.

Acknowledgement:

The Digitized Sky Surveys were produced at the Space Telescope Science Institute under U.S. Government grant NAG W-2166. The images of these surveys are based on photographic data obtained using the Oschin Schmidt Telescope on Palomar Mountain and the UK Schmidt Telescope. The plates were processed into the present compressed digital form with the permission of these institutions.

The National Geographic Society - Palomar Observatory Sky Atlas (POSS-I) was made by the California Institute of Technology with grants from the National Geographic Society.

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.

All data are subject to the copyright given in the copyright summary. Copyright information specific to individual plates is provided in the downloaded FITS headers.

Supplemental funding for sky-survey work at the ST ScI is provided by the European Southern Observatory.

Edited October 10, 2021 by Knight of Clear Skies

[Scooot]

They’re great results. I love the wide field version  

Edited October 11, 2021 by Scooot