Focal Pointe Observatory
Astrophotography by Bob Franke

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NGC 6960 - The Witch's Broom

Color Mapped Narrowband


      Click the full screen zoom button           ^
      Click the image to Zoom and Pan              

Click here to view the image without Zoomify (1913 x 1275 - 657 KB)

 
 


      Click the full screen zoom button           ^
      Click the image to Zoom and Pan              

Click here to view the image without Zoomify (1913 x 1275 - 536 KB)

Instrument

12.5" RCOS @  ~f/9 (2880 mm fl) 0.64 arcsec / pixel.  The Zoomify image scale is 1.28 to 3.26 arcsec / pixel.

Mount

Paramount ME

Camera

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

Acquisition Data

9/9/2010 to 10/26/2010 Chino Valley, AZ... with CCDAutoPilot3 & CCDSoft.  AOL guided

Exposure

SII                 600 min  (20 x 30 min, bin 1x1)

Ha                  540 min (18 x 30 min, bin 1x1)

OIII                540 min (18 x 30 min, bin 1x1)

Lum (no filter)  465 min (16 x 15 min, bin 1x1)

RGB                270 min ( 6 x 15 min each, bin 2x2)

Click here for the synthetic RGB color version.

Click here for an Ha filtered b/w image.

Software

  • CCDSoft, CCDStack, Photoshop CS w/ the Fits Liberator plugin.

  • eXcalibrator for (b-v), (v-r) star color calibration, using 12 stars from the NOMAD1 database.

  • PixFix32 (pre-beta) to repair column defects.

  • CCDStack to calibrate, register, normalize, data reject,  combining the sub exposures and RGB combine

  • PhotoShop for non-linear stretching and sharpening.

  • Noiseware Pro, a PhotoShop plug-in
Comment

North is ~ to the left.  The image is rotated 70 degrees CCW.

The Western Veil, NGC 6960, commonly named The Witch's Broom, is part of the Veil Nebula, which is also known as the Cygnus Loop. The Veil nebula is located in the constellation, Cygnus,  at a distance of about 1400 light-years. Its apparent size is more than five times the full Moon.

The Veil Nebula is a supernova remnant of heated and ionized gas. The source supernova exploded some 10,000 to 20,000 years ago. The expanding debris cloud gains its colors by sweeping up and exciting existing nearby gas.

These false color images were acquired with SII, Ha and OIII filters mapped to the RGB channels respectively. The upper image was processed to produce the orange and blue colors, made popular by the Hubble Imaging Team. The colors of bottom image follow the Hubble Palette, with the color channels more evenly stretched. The presence of sulfur, hydrogen and oxygen are clearly shown. Red indicates the presence sulfur, green hydrogen and blue oxygen. No color manipulation produces a basically green image, due to the dominance of hydrogen.

 

Focal Pointe Observatory
 Astrophotography by Bob Franke

Home
Recent Images
Galaxies
Nebulae
   Natural Color
   Narrow Band
   H-Alpha
Clusters
Comets
Solar System
Observatory
Equipment
Tips & Tricks
Published Images
My Freeware
Local Weather
Terrestrial

 

Send Email

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

IC 1805

Color Mapped Narrowband


      Click the full screen zoom button           ^
      Click the image to Zoom and Pan              

Click here to view the image without Zoomify (1875 x 1250 - 703 KB)

 
 


      Click the full screen zoom button           ^
      Click the image to Zoom and Pan              

Click here to view the image without Zoomify (1875 x 1250 - 662 KB)

Instrument

12.5" RCOS @  ~f/9 (2880 mm fl) 0.64 arcsec / pixel.  The Zoomify image scale is 1.28 to 3.20 arcsec / pixel.

Mount

Paramount ME

Camera

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

Acquisition Data

9/19/2010 to 10/27/2010 Chino Valley, AZ... with CCDAutoPilot3 & CCDSoft.  AOL guided

Exposure

SII                 630 min (21 x 30 min, bin 1x1)

Ha                  540 min (18 x 30 min, bin 1x1)

OIII                570 min (19 x 30 min, bin 1x1)

Lum (no filter)  330 min (22 x 15 min, bin 1x1)

RGB                360 min ( 8 x 15 min each, bin 2x2)

Click here for the RGB color version.

Click here for an Ha filtered b/w image.

Software

  • CCDSoft, CCDStack, Photoshop CS3.

  • eXcalibrator for (b-v), (v-r) star color calibration, using 45 stars from the NOMAD1 database.

  • PixFix32 (pre-beta) to repair column defects.

  • CCDStack to calibrate, register, normalize, data reject,  combining the sub exposures, RGB combine and DDP

  • PhotoShop for additional non-linear stretching

  • Noiseware Pro, a PhotoShop plug-in
Comment

North is ~ to the left.  This close up view of IC 1805 is rotated 110 degrees CCW.

The colors in the top image follow the spirit of the Hubble Palette. This image uses Ha, SII 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.

Sprawling across hundreds of light-years, emission nebula IC 1805 is a mix of glowing interstellar gas and dark dust clouds. Only about 7,500 light-years away, stars were born in this region, nicknamed the Heart Nebula. Light from this and other glowing gas clouds surrounding hot, young stars comes in very narrow bands of emission characteristic of energized atoms within the clouds. The top image shows the light from sulfur atoms in red hues, with hydrogen in green, and oxygen atoms in blue.

Source: NASA APOD