Picture of the week

The Clamshell Nebula (Sh2-119)

Sharpless 119, also known as the Clamshell Nebula, is a large complex of emission nebulosity in Cygnus, about 2 degrees east of the much more famous North America Nebula (NGC 7000).

It is located just around 68 Cygni, a quite bright star of magnitude 5 and one of the stars responsible for ionizing the surrounding gas.

Interestingly, there are several dark lanes and dark globules overlaying the nebula.

The area is part of the Milky Way and is populated by numerous stars.

This image is acquired with the Takahashi FSQ-106ED refractor and FLI PL16803 camera from Telescope Live in IC Astronomy Observatory, Oria, Spain.

Total integration time 360 minutes
SHO: 12 sub-frames of 600s with each filter.
Dataset Telescope Live.

Processing with PixInsight (using Autointegrate.js script from Jarmo Ruuth), StarXTerminator, Photoshop CC with AstroPanel Pro, Astronomy Tools, Topaz Sharpen AI and NoiseXTerminator plug-ins.

Selected as AAPOD2 on August 17th 2022. More info (in Dutch) can be found here.


Video of a selection of remote astro images acquired with Telescope Live


Astrophotography Nachthemel.be
Facebook Page Feed

 


Overview older Images of the Week

Mobirise

M63 - WK25 2022

Messier 63 (M63), also known as the 'Sunflower Galaxy', is a bright spiral galaxy in the northern constellation of Canes Venatici with approximately 400 billion stars.

Image captured with the Officina Stellare ProRC 700 telescope and FLI PL16803 camera from Telescope Live in IC Astronomy Observatory, Oria, Spain.

Total integration time: 495 minutes
LRGB 8:10:8:9 sub-frames of 300s and 8:7:8:9 sub-frames of 600s

More info (in Dutch) can be found here.

Mobirise

IC 2391  - WK26 2022

IC 2391 (also known as the Omicron Velorum Cluster or Caldwell 85) is an open cluster in the constellation Vela.

The cluster is about 500 light-years away from Earth and can be seen with the naked eye. It contains about 30 stars with a total visual magnitude of 2.5, spread out along 50 arcminutes.

Image acquired with the Takahashi FSQ-106ED refractor and FLI PL16803 camera from Telescope Live in Heaven's Mirror Observatory, Australia.

Total integration time: 240 minutes
LRGB: 6 sub-frames of 600s with each filter.

More info (in Dutch) can be found here.

Mobirise

JWST vs ASA500N from Telescope Live

Recently, spectacular images from the new James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) were revealed. JWST imaged a small part of NGC 3324, revealing "Cosmic Cliffs, Glittering Landscape of Star Birth".

Here is my own image of NGC 3324 in Carina, with the JWST image inset...

This Hubble colour palette image was acquired with the ASA500N telescope and FLI PL16803 camera from Telescope Live in El Sauce Observatory, Chile.

Total integration time: 100 minutes

SHO 4:2:4 subs of 600s with each narrowband filter (SII, Halpha and OIII).

More info (in Dutch) and pictures of NGC 3324 can be found here.

Mobirise

Milky Way in Ophiuchus: a 9-panel mosaic

 9-panel mosaic stretching from the core of the Milky Way in Ophiuchus to the Rho Ophiuchi Cloud complex and the Blue Horsehead Nebula region.

All data was acquired with a Nikon 200 F/2 and FLI ML16200 camera from Telescope Live in El Sauce Observatory, Chile.

Jarmo Ruuth's Astro Mosaic Telescope Planner tool was used to calculate the mosaic coordinates for the different panels. Astro Pixel Processor (APP) was used for registrating, integrating and creating the mosaics.

Min. 2 subs of 300s with LRGB were used for each panel. 10% overlap was chosen for the panels used in the mosaic image.

Total integration time: 405 minutes.
LRGB 22:21:19:19 subs of 300s.

File size of the integrated images (for each color filter) was already 546Mb (about 140 Mpixels) and difficult to handle. Therefore, I cropped, compressed (from 72 to 36 pixels / inch) & post-processed everything in Photoshop.

The final image covers a wide field of this MW area with a field radius of nearly 13 degrees (see map with the location of this image after standard plate solving in Astrobin).

More info (in Dutch) can be found here.

© Copyright 2022 Nachthemel.be - All Rights Reserved

Made with ‌

Offline Website Maker