Instrument

Takahashi FSQ-106ED @ f/5.0 (530 mm F.L.) Captured at 2.1 arcsec/pixel.  Shown at 3.48 and 9.27 arcsec/pixel.

Mount

Losmandy G11 with Gemini L4 v1.0

Camera

SBIG STF-8300M Self Guiding Package w/ mono ST-i, using Baader RGB filters.

Acquisition Data

1/22/2014 to 2/21/2014 Chino Valley, AZ... with CCDAutoPilot5 & CCDSoft.

Exposure

Software & Processing Notes

• CCDSoft, CCDStack, PixInsight and Photoshop CS6.

• No SDSS stars were available for color balancing, so a standard image-train color calibration was used, as determined by eXcalibrator v4.2, and then adjusted for altitude extinction.

• CCDStack to calibrate, register, normalize, data reject, combine the sub exposures and to create the RGB image.

• PixInsight for gradient removal and initial non-linear stretching.

• PhotoShop for LRGB combine and final touch-up.

• Noiseware 5, a PhotoShop plug-in.

Comment

North is to the right.
At a distance of about 1000 light-years, this beautiful molecular cloud is found at the very northeast corner of the constellation Aries. Three blue reflection nebulae, vdB13, 16 and 17, highlight the image. VdB 17 is also catalogued as NGC 1333. Although reflection nebulae are usually blue, the image shows two relatively rare yellow reflection nebula.

Also shown are several dark nebulae as identified by the Aladin Sky Atlas and catalogued by Beverly Lynds and Edward Barnard.

Scattered throughout the image are many HH objects. The two groupings, at the upper right, are the most interesting. In the 1940s, George Herbig and Guillermo Haro independently studied and identified these objects as a distinct type of the emission nebula. The nebulae are associated with newly born stars. Several are often seen around a single star and aligned with star's rotational axis.