Instrument

12.5" RCOS @  ~f/9 (2880 mm fl) 1.28 arcsec / pixel.  The Zoomify image scale is 1.28 to 3.07 arcsec / pixel.

Mount

Paramount ME

Camera

SBIG STL-11000 w/ internal filter wheel, AstroDon Gen I Filters

Acquisition Data

11/14/2010 to 2/2/2011 Chino Valley, AZ... with CCDAutoPilot3 & CCDSoft.  AOL guided

Exposure

SII   630 min. (21 x 30 min. bin 1x1)

Hα    600 min. (20 x 30 min. bin 1x1)

OIII  810 min. (27 x 30 min. bin 1x1)

Click here for the RGB color image.

Click here for an Ha filtered b/w image.

Software

• CCDSoft, CCDStack, Photoshop CS w/ the Fits Liberator plugin. Noel Carboni's actions.

• PixFix32 (pre-beta) to repair hot/cold pixels and column defects.

• CCDStack to calibrate, register, normalize, data reject, combine the sub exposures.

• PhotoShop for color combine &  on-linear stretching.

North is to the bottom

This is a close up view of an interesting region in IC1848, the Soul Nebula. IC1848 (Sharpless 2-199, LBN 667) is locate in the constellation Cassiopeia, at a distance of about 7000 light-years. The central formation is reminiscent of Thor's Hammer in Bryce Canyon, Utah.

The colors in the top image follow the spirit of the Hubble Palette. This image uses SII, Ha and OIII filters mapped to the red, green and blue channels respectively. The bottom image uses the same filter mapping with adjustments to the channel levels to create the blue and gold motif, made popular by the Hubble Imaging Team.