ASTRO: Widefield North American Nebula/Pelican/IC5068 in [SII], Ha and [OIII]

here are two different palettes used for the Na Nebula/Pelican IC5068
complex.

http://www.rdcrisp.darkhorizons.org/...c5068_page.htm

This is widefield shot of 9 square degrees taken with a horribly
undersampled FLI Dream Machine used on an AP Traveler with a 0.75x
telecompressor. The effective focal length was close to 475mm which results
in a plate scale of 10.5 arc-sec/pixel.

Focusing was a bit challenging but I got "close enough" to see what the area
looks like.

Probably I will re-shoot in higher resolution this year.

is there supposed to be an image on this link?


http://www.rdcrisp.darkhorizons.org/...c5068_page.htm

"News" wrote in message
...
is there supposed to be an image on this link?


http://www.rdcrisp.darkhorizons.org/...c5068_page.htm



There is - and it is quite a good one.

Richard,

neat image, lots of signal. With the colours you gave it it looks a bit like
an aurora :-)

Stefan

"Richard Crisp" schrieb im Newsbeitrag
m...
here are two different palettes used for the Na Nebula/Pelican IC5068
complex.

http://www.rdcrisp.darkhorizons.org/...c5068_page.htm

This is widefield shot of 9 square degrees taken with a horribly
undersampled FLI Dream Machine used on an AP Traveler with a 0.75x
telecompressor. The effective focal length was close to 475mm which
results
in a plate scale of 10.5 arc-sec/pixel.

Focusing was a bit challenging but I got "close enough" to see what the
area
looks like.

Probably I will re-shoot in higher resolution this year.

Thanks for the comment Stefan. The colors are a fall-out from using the
filters I did. The [SII], Ha and [OIII] set only capture those specific
emission lines and then I assemble them into a tricolor.

One way to assign the colors is strictly by wavelength: the longest
wavelength gets Red, the next shorter gets Green and the shortest wavelength
gets Blue. That would correspond to the image just below.

http://www.rdcrisp.darkhorizons.org/...068_S2HaO3.jpg I
call that palette the "Pillars Palette" because that is the color palette
used by the Hubble team that took that wondeful shot of the core of M16.
Same filters too.

The other way I combine them is to assign Ha to Red (sort of familiar from
the visual world), [OIII] to Green (again, kind of familiar from the visual
world) so that leaves [SII] being used for Blue. Here is the image that
results from that assignment:

http://www.rdcrisp.darkhorizons.org/...068_HaO3S2.jpg
I call that Palette the "CFHT Palette" because that is what they did with
their Rosette Nebula:

http://www.rdcrisp.darkhorizons.org/..._cfht_page.htm


Best wishes for the new year folks!
Richard



"Stefan Lilge" wrote in message
...
Richard,

neat image, lots of signal. With the colours you gave it it looks a bit
like
an aurora :-)

Stefan

"Richard Crisp" schrieb im Newsbeitrag
m...
here are two different palettes used for the Na Nebula/Pelican IC5068
complex.

http://www.rdcrisp.darkhorizons.org/...c5068_page.htm

This is widefield shot of 9 square degrees taken with a horribly
undersampled FLI Dream Machine used on an AP Traveler with a 0.75x
telecompressor. The effective focal length was close to 475mm which
results
in a plate scale of 10.5 arc-sec/pixel.

Focusing was a bit challenging but I got "close enough" to see what the
area
looks like.

Probably I will re-shoot in higher resolution this year.

Last night I was blessed with another clear night. There was a lot of moon
and it was up high most of the night, but I was using Ha and [OIII] filters
so I wasn't too worried about it; I was just happy to have a clear sky after
all the rain we've had recently.

I took some more data for the Cone project and began taking some exposures
of Thor's Helmet in Ha and [OIII].

I did not get but one hour's worth of Ha for Thor but did assemble it into a
sample shot: sort of an early look-see at what may be in store.

http://www.rdcrisp.darkhorizons.org/..._thor_page.htm

I used my Dream Machine exposed through a Custom Scientific 3nm Ha filter.
The scope was my C14. I used and AO7/ST7 for guiding via an RCOS Optical
Systems Dichroic Beam Splitter.

The C14 is running about f/12.46 with the long imaging train hanging off the
back. At that slow focal ratio, I was running 20 minute exposures and took
three, which were median combined to make the image.

More results when they become available.

Richard

I did not get but one hour's worth of Ha for Thor but did assemble it into
a
sample shot: sort of an early look-see at what may be in store.

I like that one Richard ... very reminiscent of a Tech Pan image.

-- Marty

Martin C Germano
http://home.earthlink.net/~mcgermano

"Richard Crisp" wrote

here are two different palettes used for the Na Nebula/Pelican IC5068
complex.

http://www.rdcrisp.darkhorizons.org/...c5068_page.htm

This is widefield shot of 9 square degrees taken with a horribly
undersampled FLI Dream Machine used on an AP Traveler with a 0.75x
telecompressor. The effective focal length was close to 475mm which
results
in a plate scale of 10.5 arc-sec/pixel.........

That's a very interesting pair of images Richard! Have you tried
'narrow-band' filters and a full spectrum Luminance image?

For such wide-field images I think your image scale is just fine. I've
used a ST-6 on an 80mm Brandon triplet and I'm happy with the results. You
might get more resolution using the DRIZZLE method, but I'm not sure that it
would matter much considering the fine results you already have.

George Normandin

"Martin C Germano" wrote in message
hlink.net...
I did not get but one hour's worth of Ha for Thor but did assemble it
into
a
sample shot: sort of an early look-see at what may be in store.

I like that one Richard ... very reminiscent of a Tech Pan image.

-- Marty

Martin C Germano
http://home.earthlink.net/~mcgermano



Thank you Marty, What a nice comment from the "king of Tech Pan". Let me
tell you that you have been a guiding light in getting me interested in this
hobby. I've seen your images for years and they were always pulling me to
just do it. Finally in late 2000 I decided to buy a telescope and what a
wonderful adventure it has been.

Thank you very much for the comment. It means a lot to me.
Best regards,
Richard

Richard,

beautiful image. Looks like the skull of some strange animal.

Stefan