StarNut Offline Upload & Sell: Off
|
Hi,
I present here several views of the Eagle Nebula. This field contains most of the Eagle Nebula, which consists of an open star cluster (catalogued as M16), and an emission nebula (catalogued as IC4703). At the center of this field are the gas clouds made famous in the Hubble photo entitled "Pillars of Creation." Another piece of this image that has been imaged by Hubble is the almost-horizontal spire to the left of the Pillars of Creation; this feature is 9.5 light years long. These photos are 40% (lateral measure) of the full-resolution my camera produces. As a special bonus , The last photo is a set of three, so you can compare mine with the Hubble efforts, at the same image scale. On the left is mine (a full resolution crop), then the 1995 Hubble image, followed by a recent (2014) Hubble image.
These are part of a large star-forming region, located in the Sagittarius arm of the Milky Way. There are a number of what look like black blobs floating around in the field; astronomers think that these (so-called "Bok globules") are "protostars," and may congeal into stars in time. There is a lot of cold hydrogen gas in this field, showing up in this set of photos as the dark clouds (dark because they don't allow light to pass through them; the stars you see superimposed onto them are between them and us). This region is about 7,000 light years away, and shines at approximately apparent magnitude 8. The cluster is estimated to be 5.5 million years old, and the nebula a bit older.
The first image is taken with the same filter set as the Hubble used for its famous photos; my telescope is a tad smaller than the Hubble, and I have miles and miles of atmosphere to peer through, so I can't quite get the same detail as Hubble (and these aren't full resolution images). The second photo is in "true" color, predominantly red because of the hydrogen alpha (ionized hydrogen) emissions that dominate the light emissions in the area. The third photo is grayscale, made of 60% of Ha-filtered data and 40% OIII (doubly ionized oxygen), included just because I think it's pretty.
There are about 48 hours of light frame images integrated into these photos, taken over a period of three months (weather in South Australia has been horrible).
Telescope: RC Optical Systems 14.5 inch Ritchey–Chrétien carbon fiber truss telescope, with ion-milled optics
Camera: SBIG STL11000M with internal color filter wheel (Astrodon Type II filter set)
Mount: Bisque Paramount ME German Equatorial Mount.
Enjoy!
Mark
http://www.de-regt.com/Astronomy/Eagle.40.Hubble.jpg
http://www.de-regt.com/Astronomy/Eagle.40.HaRGB.jpg
http://www.de-regt.com/Astronomy/Eagle.40.Ha.jpg
http://www.de-regt.com/Astronomy/PillarsTrio.jpg
Edited on Sep 24, 2015 at 04:40 PM · View previous versions
|