Discovered in 1787 by Caroline Herschel, NGC 7380 is an open cluster of stars that lies approximately 8,500 light years away from Earth in the constellation Cepheus. It lies in the Perseus arm of our Milky Way Galaxy and has an angular size of ~25 arc-minutes in our night sky.
Excited by intense stellar radiation, the glowing gas surrounding this cluster forms an emission nebula colloquially known as the Wizard Nebula. Using narrowband filters, much of the light pollution from nearby Cleveland, Ohio was rejected from the image, allowing finer details to be revealed.
This image was integrated using frames shot on 4 different nights using a modified 9.25"Schmidt-Cassegrain f/2.2, through narrowband filters for Hydrogen α (656.3 ±7 nm), Oxygen III (500.7 ±7 nm), and Sulfur II (672.4 ±6.5 nm). PixInsight software was used to process the many subframes into this image using the SHO palette.
Exposures: ~ 5 hrs. total equivalent
285 x 30 seconds Hα/OIII
310 x 30 seconds SII
Tags: nebula stars space astrophotography edgehd narrowband SHO wizard wizard nebula NGC 7380 pixinsight cleveland ohio
Using frames already collected for ionized hydrogen and oxygen (see flic.kr/p/2pXbEhX), this image includes frames that were shot using a Sulfur II filter a few nights later.
This reveals more details in the nebula. Reminiscent of the famous "Pillars of Creation" image that was published in National Geographic Magazine, I used the so called "Foraxx SHO" palette to combine the colors to provide more contrast between the different gasses, since Sulfur II and Hydrogen Alpha are both a very deep red color.
Tags: nebula elephant trunk elephant's trunk SHO astrophotography cepheus
... in the universe?
This is an image of the so-called Elephant's Trunk Nebula in the constellation Cepheus. The nebula gets its name from the long cloud formation near the center of this image, somewhat resembling an extended elephant's trunk. The actual size of this structure is estimated to be a staggering 20 light-years in length. Take that, Dumbo!
I integrated 183 color exposures (each 30 seconds long) shot through a 9.25" Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope fitted with a dual narrowband filter. The secondary mirror of the telescope had been replaced by a Starizona "HyperStar" optical which converts the telescope from its native f10 to a focal ratio f2.2. In this way, the light gathering capability of the telescope is more than 20 times faster than in it's original configuration.
The red color corresponds to ionized hydrogen gas and the blue-green is associated with ionized oxygen. The dense, dark clouds scattered around the "trunk" are known as Bok globules and are a nursery for the formation of new stars.
Tags: nebula space stars elephant trunk elephant's trunk cepheus IC 1396A
The Iris Nebula (aka Caldwell 4) is a relatively bright reflection nebula in the northern constellation Cepheus.
An enormous gas and dust cloud (more than 6 light-years across) mostly blocks out the background stars in the Milky Way and might go completely unseen if it weren't for the intensely bright, blue-white star at it's center that illuminates (by reflection) the material in the dust cloud.
The stellar winds sculpt and shape the dust cloud into a form which somewhat resembles a purple iris flower.
This image was created by integrating 47 one-minute exposures taken through a 9.25" Flat-Field Corrected Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope. The secondary mirror was replaced with Starizona "Hyperstar" optical which converts the telescope to have a 525mm focal length with an effective optical ratio of f2.2. No filters were used during imaging.
The image was post-processed using PixInsight and the Power of Inverted Pixels (PIP) process was used to enhance the faint dust cloud visible against the blackness of deep space.
Tags: iris nebula C4 Caldwell 4 reflection nebula cepheus dust in the wind space cloud
Shot over a span of three nights from my backyard, the Dumbbell Nebula looks bright and colorful in a sea of stars. This object is classified as a planetary nebula, implying that it has a dying star in its core.
Having exhausted its primary source of hydrogen about 10,000 years ago, the dying star, a white dwarf star, is fusing helium into heavier elements like carbon and oxygen. The star is no longer massive enough to hold these materials together against the ongoing fusion reactions and we see ionized hydrogen (red) and oxygen (blue-green) dispersing out into space, almost two light years across.
This nebula was imaged using a 9.25" Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope and a 62Mp one-shot-color astro-camera. No filters were used. I live in an extremely light-polluted suburb so I had to sort out only the best 242x60sec subframes to use for stacking in PixInsight. The image was also post-processed in PixInsight using generalized hyperbolic stretch to reveal the details in this distant cloud of gas and dust.
Tags: M27 Messier 27 ngc 6853 nebula dumbbell nebula astrophotography vulpecula