Tag: Nebula

B33 Horsehead Nebula

Horesehead nebula is a dark nebula located in constellation Orion, approximately 1550 light years from Earth. The bright star is on the picture is called Alnitak (eastern star of Orion’s belt). Horsehead shape is a cloud of cold gas, blocking the light coming from ionized hydrogen in the background.

This nebula is my favorite, but it’s not so simple to photograph, due to its dimness. Even with very fast telescope (f-stop 2.8) I had to use quite long exposure times – 6 minutes. The picture was postprocessed by bi-color technique, which means putting 27 H alpha pictures into red channel and 17 OIII pictures into green and blue channel. This was done in Pixinsight software.

B33-2016-02-05-FL730-40C-360s-27Ha-15OIII-LHa


M42 Great nebula in Orion

I think everyone knows constellation Orion, but only few people know that there is Great nebula in Orion, visible even by naked eye. It’s located between his belt and legs. The nebula is approximately 1300 light years from earth and it has 24 light years in diameter. Red color shows a lot of hydrogen gas, which is essence for star formation. In fact, the Orion nebula is the closes location from Earth, where the stars are born.

Since this nebula is visible by naked eye, with help of telescope even with sub-urban area, it’s not necessary to use long exposure times. I used just 3 minutes exposures and the picture yielded in nearly overexposed photo. Small nebula on the right side is NGC1973 Running man nebula.

M42-OrionNebula-2015-12-13-30-20x180sL-12x120sRGB2x2-FL730


NGC 7635 Bubble Nebula

NGC 7635, known as Bubble Nebula is an HII region in the constellation Cassiopeia. Bubble shape structure is caused by the solar wind caused by a massive star.

Well, I must admit, the Hubble Space Telescope has a better resolution, but my telescope has a better price-performance ratio.

Telescope:Newton 254/1000 mm
Aperture:254 mm
Focal length:730 mm
MountGemini G53f
AutoguidingZWO 174MM, TS 60/240 mm
Camera:Moravian instruments G2 8300M @ -30C
Corrector:ASA 0.73 reducer
Filters:Baader Ha, OIII, SII
Exposure:39x Ha, 35x OIII, 32x SII, 300 s, bin 1×1

NGC6960 Veil nebula

For the third time I am trying to capture the whole Veil nebula, but again, there is a part missing. This time I used the smallest telescope, I have at home – newton 150/600, reduced to focal length 438 mm, by ASA 0.73 reducer. This picture contains the first picture in the left top corner and the second picture in the right bottom corner. Anyway, there is still something missing, therefore next time I have to reduce the focal length even more or do a mosaic.

Telescope:Newton 150/600 mm
Aperture:150 mm
Focal length:438 mm
MountGemini G53f
AutoguidingZWO 174MM, TS 60/240 mm
Camera:Moravian instruments G2 8300M @-30C
Corrector:ASA 2″ reducer 0.73
Filters:Baader Ha 7 nm, OIII 8.5 nm SII 8nm
Exposure:9xHa, 9xOIII, 600 s, bin 1×1
Date:2015-11-09

NGC6960 Veil nebula

The previous picture of the Veil nebula was done by using a focal length of 1000 mm. Since this nebula is huge, I wanted to capture also the other parts. This time I reduced the focal length to 730 mm, by ASA corrector/reducer.

Telescope:Newton 254/1000 mm
Aperture:254 mm
Focal length:730 mm
MountSkywatcher EQ-6
AutoguidingOrion Mini Autoguider
Camera:Moravian instruments G2 8300M @ -30C
Corrector:ASA 2″ corrector/reducer
Filters:Baader Ha, OIII
Exposure:15x Ha, 15x OIII, 600 s, bin 1×1

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


M1 Crab nebula

Crab nebula is the first discovered supernova remnant in history. It’s approximately 6500 light years from Earth and has diameter 11 light years. Letter M1 stands for first position in the catalogue of deep space objects, created by Charles Messier. This guy started to work as an assistant for French Navy astronomer Joseph Nicolas Delisle. He had lovely job – comet hunting. Almost every evening, just observing the skies would be my dream job. During year 1757 his supervisor calculated the return of Halley’s Comet. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, monsieur Delisle was wrong and poor Messier was observing wrong part of the sky at wrong time. However he saw something, the object which was not moving, compared to comets. He discovered Crab nebula. Later on, he pointed this telescope to other directions and created probably the most popular catalogue of amateur astronomers and astrophotographers living on northern hemisphere, containing more than 100 objects.

I am not particularly proud of the image I am showing here. Triangular stars, not fully sharp. I can do better than this. So M1, you will meet my telescope in the future again.

M01-2015-02-10-N-30C-480s-17L-7RGB-pixi