Focal Pointe Observatory
Astrophotography by Bob Franke

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IC 443 & Sh2-249 Hα Filtered

 

Click the image for a half size 7.0 arcsec/pixel display (1800 x 1200)

Instrument

Takahashi FSQ-106ED @ f/5.0 (530 mm F.L.)  Captured at 3.5 arcsec/pixel.  Shown resampled to 16.8 arcsec/pixel.

Mount

Paramount ME

Camera

SBIG STL-11000 w/ internal filter wheel, AstroDon 6nm Filters

Acquisition Data

1/17/2009 to 1/30/2009 Chino Valley... with CCDAutoPilot3

Exposure

Ha  480 min.  (16 x 30 min. bin 1x1)

Click here for a natural color image.
Click here for the narrowband color mapped version.

Software

CCDSoft, CCDStack, Photoshop CS w/ the Fits Liberator plugin, Noel Carboni's actions and Russell Croman's GradientXTerminator

CCDStack to calibrate, register, normalize, data reject & combine.

PhotoShop for non-linear stretching.

Comment

North is to the top.

IC 443, the Jellyfish Nebula, is a Galactic supernova remnant, in the constellation Gemini, that occurred 8,000 years ago. It is one of the best studied cases of supernova remnants, interacting with surrounding molecular clouds. IC 443 spans about 65 light-years at an estimated distance of 5,000 light-years.

The large expanse, to the left and to the top of the image, is the emission nebula Sh2-249... at a distance of 5200 light years.