NGC 1893 Reprocessed

Graphic artist Ray Fox on the views_thru_the-eyepiece group suggested
that my original image was clipped and that I should emphasize the
midtone ranges. I followed Ray's advice and the result was
impressive. I had thrown away a lot of signal in the original
processing! Thanks Ray!

Side-by-side comparisons with histograms at
http://home.att.net/~dpersyk/new.htm

I welcome comments from everyone. Thanks for looking.

Clear skies,

Dennis Persyk
Igloo Observatory Home Page http://dpersyk.home.att.net
Hampshire, IL

Dennis Persyk:

Thanks for the neat comets, and other stuff.

The streamers cause me to wonder what they are. And, not why they are. I
suspect that science is concerned more with the what, and the causes
that are operative, rather than the social concept of why they are.

If particle, X, is in orbit with the whole comet, and it is orbiting the
Sun a little off the main trajectory of the whole comet, and there are
many similar particles, then I wonder why they don't combine into a
single thing. The are all obviously in orbit along with the main comet.

I say that because I suspect that the seemingly observed 'jet' emission
theory may not be the whole story. Your streamer photos may provide
evidence of another functioning of the matter of comets.

When saw the comet Hayakutake when I was in Western Colorado I saw the
trail of the comet that was enormous. Even though there were small town
lights two and ten miles distant, and there was a faint high altitude
haze, I saw by eye after one hour of dark adaptation what was to me
unbelievable. Forget the telescope and get out the 28 mm lens and the
SLR 35 mm film camera, thought. The comet was huge. The center was small
and the trail was enormous in size. The center was the blurry bright
part, and as the days came and went, or rather, as the entity came and
went it changed in configuration and location in the skies as it went
through the Solar system inside the orbit of the Earth. The streaming
trail changed as it went. It was awe inspiring.

What I saw was that the trail subtended an angle of view across the sky,
measured from the nucleus to the most faint extent of the trail, of
approximately more than 60 degrees of visual angle. With eyeglasses, and
no telescope, the trail must have been several tens of millions of miles
long.

I suspect that the particles and molecules of the trail were not ejecta,
rather they were co-orbiting stuff that had been picked up by the
nucleus in its travels. The stuff is not so much on its way away from
the nucleus as it is being attracted by the nucleus and pulled along
with the nucleus in its travels. The peripheral stuff is being pulled
into the nucleus.

The streamers may be the evidence of the mutual attraction of the
materials, and that by means of repeat interactions of the materials
that attract the other material in lines rather than in scatterings.
What is near a line, or possibly more of a conical region of materials,
may be more strongly attracted to the line than not. I suggest that the
longitudinal pull of the entire cloud may be sufficient to bring in a
lot of stray materials.

I suspect that the longitudinal gravitational attraction of the
materials within the streamers may be stronger than it is laterally.
Gravitational reinforcement may be operative in line with more mass than
not. Materials may then be swept into the trail as the trail traverses
the distances of space.

The linings up into streamers may be the simple form of the spiral
agglomerations of the materials of the comet due to the gravitational
attractions of the materials that co-orbit the Sun and are called the comet.

Just mulling over what may be a cause for the apparent cometary center
and trail that we see.

Thanks for posting the neat photos.

Ralph Hertle