My Astro Photo Of The Day

[orogenicman]

As I said in my introduction, I am also an amateur astronomer. I am usually quitebusy this time of year observing and taking photos, but I had shoulder surgery on Tuesday, and will be sidelined for a while. So I started going through some of my photos from earlier this year, and decided to reprocess a few. Here is one that I finished this morning.

Messier 8, in Sagitarius
5x5 minute exposures stacked and dark subtracted
ISO - 800

Equipment

Konus 200 mm f5 Newtonian (1,000 mm focal length)
Losmandy G-11 mount
Orion Shorty Autoguide scope with starshooter autoguider
Hutech modified Canon T1i DSLR

Taken at the Louisville Astronomical Society observatory,
in Curby, Indiana, on July 2, 2010

[Cego_Colher]

Pretty. I don't mind if you post more. I enjoy pictures of the stars.

also, I haven't welcomed you, yet. so, welcome.

[orogenicman]

Pretty. I don't mind if you post more. I enjoy pictures of the stars.

also, I haven't welcomed you, yet. so, welcome.

Thanks, Cego. Here is an image I took last Thursday of Comet 103P/Hartley while observing at Taylorsville Lake, Ky. It is currently in the Constellation Perseus, though you need dark skies and a telescope to see it. Enjoy:

Comet 103P/Hartley

2x2 minute exposure at ISO 800

Equipment - same as previous image

[TheDarkestOfAngels]

This is quite enjoyable. I'll get my spot in this thread and enjoy the view.
Keep them coming. I LOVE astronomy.

[orogenicman]

Thanks. Here is an image I took about a month ago of the Cocoon nebula:

IC 5146, THE COCOON NEBULA


Found between Cygnus and Cassiopeia, this beautiful nebula is nearly 15 light-years wide, located some 4,000 light
years away. Like other star forming regions, it stands out in red, glowing, hydrogen gas excited by young, hot stars.
The dusty halo around the fringe of the nebula is a dark molecular cloud, which gives the surroundings a bit of a washed
out appearance. In wide field exposures, you can see a dark dust lane running away from the nebula, which would be
towards the top of the image. This image is a stack of 6 five-minute images for a total of 30 minutes of exposure.

[orogenicman]

Messier 17 (The Omega Nebula), in Sagitarius, May 07, 2010

10x2-min exposures with a Hutech modified Canon T1i DSLR (ISO 800)
and a Lumicon UHC filter at f5 on a Konus 200 mm Newtonian reflector
Stacked, dark subtracted in in Deepskystacker, processed in Photoshop CS3
Mount: Losmandy G-11 Gemini (v4)
Orion Shorty Auto guide scope with Star Shooter autoguider

From seds.org:

The Omega Nebula Messier 17 (M17, NGC 6618), also called the Swan Nebula, the Horseshoe Nebula, or (especially on the southern hemisphere) the Lobster Nebula, is a region of star formation and shines by excited emission, caused by the higher energy radiation of young stars. Unlike in many other emission nebulae, however, these stars are not obvious in optical images, but hidden in the nebula. Star formation is either still active in this nebula, or ceased very recently. A small cluster of about 35 bright but obscurred stars seems to be imbedded in the nebulosity.

This object was discovered by Philippe Loys de Chéseaux and is one of only six "nebulae properly so called" in his catalog. De Chéseaux's discovery didn't get widely known, thus Charles Messier independently rediscovered it and cataloged it on June 3, 1764.

The color of the Omega Nebula is reddish, with some graduation to pink. This color comes from the hot hydrogen gas which is excited to shine by the hottest stars which have just formed within the nebula. However, the brightest region is actually of white color, not overexposed as one might think. This phenomenon is apparently a result of a mixture of emission light from the hottest gas, together with reflections of the bright star light from the dust in this region. The nebula contains a large amount of dark obscuring material, which is obvious in its remarkable features. This matter has been heated by the hidden young stars, and shines brightly in infrared light.

The mass of the gas has been estimated to amount about 800 times that of the Sun, enough for forming a conspicuous cluster, and a good deal more than that of the Orion nebula M42. While the bright nebula seems to be roughly 15 light years in extension, the total gaseous cloud, including low-luminosity material, seems to extend to at least 40 light years. Distance estimates are spread over a wide range, but modern values are between 5,000 and 6,000 light years, thus little less than that of its apparent neighbor, M16 with the Eagle nebula - apparently, these two star forming regions are indeed close together, in the same spiral arm (the Sagittarius or Sagittarius-Carina arm) of the Milky Way galaxy, and perhaps part of the same giant complex of cosmic clouds of interstellar matter.

As for many diffuse nebulae, the overall brightness of this object is difficult to estimate, and is given discordantly in the sources. While older sources give estimates around 7.0 magnitudes, probably because these were performed at northern observatories, modern compilations list its visual magnitude brighter: Don Machholz lists it at 6.6 mag, the Sky Catalogue 2000.0 at 5.0 mag, and the Deep Sky Field Guide to Uranometria 2000.0 gives a value of 6.0 mag (which we adopt here); anyway, it is visible to the naked eye under good observing conditions from not too northern geographic latitudes!

The Omega or Swan Nebula M17 can be found quite easily, and similar and simultaneously to its apparent neighbor, M16. The first way to find it is locating the white giant star Gamma Scuti, of magnitude 4.70 and spectral type A2 III, e.g. from Altair (Alpha Aquilae) via Delta and Lambda Aql; M16 is slightly more than 2 degrees to the southwest of this star. Alternatively, in particular with a pair of binoculars, locate star cloud M24 and move northward via a pair of stars of 6th and 7th mag in the north-eastern edge of M24, followed by small open cluster M18 1deg north, and M17 another 1deg to the north.

Under very favorable conditions, M17 is just visible to the naked eye at its apparent visual brightness of 6.0 magnitudes.

[Minimalist]

That's awesome.

[orogenicman]

IC 5146, the Cocoon Nebula, near the Constellation Cygnus, Taken on September 5, 2010

7x5 minute exposures, dark subtracted for a total exposure time of 35 minutes at ISO 800

Equipment:

Hutech modified Canon T1i DSLR mounted at the focal plane of the telescope
Modified 200 mm Konus f5 Newtonian (1,000 mm fl) with Baader coma corrector
Losmandy G-11 Gemini Go To mount with Losmandy heavy duty tripod
80 mm Orion Shorty Guidescope with Starshooter autoguider

Processed with deepsky stacker and Adobe Photoshop CS3 extended

Found between Cygnus and Cassiopeia, this beautiful nebula is nearly 15 light-years wide, located some 4,000 light years away. Like other star forming regions, it stands out in red, glowing, hydrogen gas excited by young, hot stars. The dusty halo around the fringe of the nebula is a dark molecular cloud, which gives the surroundings a bit of a washed out appearance. In wide field exposures, you can see a dark dust lane running away from the nebula, which would be
towards the top of the image.

My scope

[orogenicman]

Messier 20 (The Trifid Nebula), in Sagittarius

This is a stack of 6 three-minute exposures and
1 two-minute exposures for a total of 20
minutes of exposure, dark subtracted, ISO 800, processed
with Adobe Photoshop CS3 Extended, taken on July 3, 2010
at Taylorsville Lake, Kentucky

Equipment:
Modified 200 mm f5 Konus Newtonian with Baader Coma corrector
Hutech Modified Canon T1i DSLR
Orion Shorty Autoguide scope with Starshooter autoguider
Losmandy G-11 Gemini Go To mount with Losmandy Heavy duty tripod

From Wikipedia:

Messier 20 is an H II region located in Sagittarius. Its name means 'divided into three lobes'. The object is an unusual combination of an open cluster of stars, an emission nebula (the lower, red portion), a reflection nebula (the upper, blue portion) and a dark nebula (the apparent 'gaps' within the emission nebula that cause the trifid appearance; these are also designated Barnard 85). Viewed through a small telescope, the Trifid Nebula is a bright and colorful object, and is thus a perennial favorite of amateur astronomers.

The Trifid Nebula was the subject of an investigation by astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope in 1997, using filters that isolate emission from hydrogen atoms, ionized sulfur atoms, and doubly ionized oxygen atoms. The images were combined into a false-color composite picture to suggest how the nebula might look to the eye.

The close-up images show a dense cloud of dust and gas, which is a stellar nursery full of embryonic stars. This cloud is about 8 light years away from the nebula's central star. A stellar jet protrudes from the head of the cloud and is about 0.75 light-years long. The jet's source is a young stellar object deep within the cloud. Jets are the exhaust gasses of star formation. Radiation from the nebula's central star makes the jet glow.

The images also showed a finger-like stalk to the right of the jet. It points from the head of the dense cloud directly toward the star that powers the Trifid nebula. This stalk is a prominent example of an evaporating gaseous globules, or 'EGGs'. The stalk has survived because its tip is a knot of gas that is dense enough to resist being eaten away by the powerful radiation from the star.

In January, 2005, NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope discovered 30 embryonic stars and 120 newborn stars not seen in visible light images.

[orogenicman]

Thanks. It's one of my favorites. It even looks good in visual observations.