Month: August 2015

NGC6960 Veil nebula

Veil nebula is a supernova remnant – hot and ionized gas and dust floating in the universe, as a remainder of a mighty star, which once shined (roughly before 5 – 8 thousand of years), locate in constellation Cygnus (swan). This nebula is relatively close to Earth – only 1470 light years, therefore the visual angle is huge – approximately 3 degrees, which is six times the diameter of the Moon.

The picture is composed by bi-color technique. Two narrow band pictures were taken (Ha and OIII). H alpha was used for red channel and OIII for green and blue. Since I used quite long focal length (1000 mm) the whole DSO didn’t fit in the field of view of the camera. Next time I will try to use shorter one.

NGC6960_Veil_2015-08-23-30C-600s-7HaOIII-FL1000


M92 Globular Cluster in Hercules

Constellation Hercules contains two globular clusters. First one is spectacular Great Globular Cluster M13 and its smaller brother M92. However, the smaller one is one of the brightest and the oldest globular cluster in our galaxy. It’s 26 700 light-years away from the Solar System and it contain 250 000 stars.


M27 Dumbbell nebula

Dumbbell nebula is a planetary nebula located 1360 light-years from solar system in constellation Vulpecula (fox or little fox). Dumbbell was the first discovered planetary nebula by Charles Messier. It’s very popular deep space object for amateur astrophotographers, including me.

Actually, this is my second attempt of this planetary nebula. This time I concentrated on bi-color image composed of hydrogen alpha (Hα) and oxygen (OIII). This is because of the fact that the planetary nebulae contain these two gases. Hα was inserted into red channel and OIII into blue and green channel. Post processing was done in PixInsight software.

M27_Dumbbell_2015-08-22-30C-600s-10Ha11OIII-FL1000


M16 Eagle nebula

Eagle nebula is a huge cloud of hydrogen gas. Probably the most famous picture of Hubble Space Telescope was taken here – Pillars of Creation. Here we can witness of a creation of new space objects. The hydrogen gas is attracted together and forms spherical object. As soon specific conditions occur, fusion reaction starts and star is born.

Eagle nebula was my first deep space object. However, I am not brave enough to publish my first picture here, because the quality was quite poor. I waited one year and made this picture with new equipment in decent quality. Since M16 is composed mainly from hydrogen alpha and has a little bit of OIII, I chose bi-color image. H alpha was inserted into red channel and OIII into green and blue.

M16_2015-08-05_300s-30C_11xOIII_11xHa_pixi