Instrument

12.5" RCOS @  ~f/9 (2880 mm fl) 0.64 arcsec / pixel.  The Zoomify image scale is 0.85 to 1.70 arcsec / pixel.

Mount

Paramount ME

Camera

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

Acquisition Data

1/19/2011 to 3/28/2011 Chino Valley, AZ... with CCDAutoPilot3 & CCDSoft.  AOL guided

Exposure

Red  285 min. (19 x 15 min. bin 2x2)

Hα    510 min. (17 x 30 min. bin 1x1)

OIII  750 min. (25 x 30 min. bin 1x1)

RGB  855 min  (19 x 15 min. bin 2x2 each)

Red:Ha:OIII mapped to RGB respectively with an RGB overlay of stars.  A bit of mildly stretched wide band red was used because the SII data was very weak.

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 and Russell Croman's GradientXTerminator.

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

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

• PhotoShop for color combine &  on-linear stretching.

North is to the top

Jones-Emberson 1 (PK 164+31.1) is a 14th magnitude planetary nebula in the constellation Lynx at a distance of 1600 light years. It is a larger planetary with low surface brightness. The 16.8-magnitude central star is very blue white dwarf.

Source: Wikipedia

The colors in the top image follow the spirit of the Hubble Palette. This palette normally uses SII, Ha and OIII filters mapped to the red, green and blue channels respectively. Because the SII data was very weak, wide band Red data was substituted for the SII.

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.