A Dusty Heart with Maffei 1 & 2 (Optical + IR)

[Knight of Clear Skies]

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.

Edited September 3, 2022 by Knight of Clear Skies

[ollypenrice]

This has to be an interesting project. I think that the question is, how best to present it. My initial thought is that an animated GIFF, flipping between one and the other, with a clear explanation of where the difference came from, would be the most effective format I can think of. (Not that I have the slightest competence in this issue.)

The new information certainly changes our perception of this familiar target.

Olly

[Knight of Clear Skies]

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.