July 2020 – Semper Iuvenis Photography

NGC 7822/Ced 214

NGC 7822/Ced 214 is part of a vast expanse of emission near the border between Cepheus and Cassiopeia. The nebula is set aglow by the small cluster of stars to the bottom left; Berkeley 59. One star in particular, BD+66 1673 which is a short distance above and a bit to the right of Berkeley 59, is contributing to the radiation that illuminates the interstellar gas and forms the pillars and shock fronts visible in the nebula. This magnitude 10 star has a surface temperature of nearly 45,000 C (80,000 F) and is about 100,000 times brighter than the sun! If you look closely at each of the pillars and shock fronts they all point towards Berkeley 59 and BD+66 1673.

This version of the image consists of 32 frames at 240secs; 100g; 20 offset for 2 hrs 8 mins of exposure. This was my first light on this target. I look forward to gathering more time this winter under clearer, less humid skies.

Here’s a starless version for fun. What do you think? Let me know in the comments!

Until next time,

Cheers

IC 1805: The Heart Nebula

IC 1805 - Heart Nebula — The Heart Nebula

The Heart Nebula lies some 7500 light years away from Earth and is located in the Perseus Arm of the Galaxy in the constellation Cassiopeia. It was discovered by William Herschel on 3 November 1787. It is an emission nebula showing glowing ionized hydrogen gas and darker dust lanes.

The brightest part of the nebula (a knot at its western edge) is separately classified as NGC 896 and known as the Fish Head Nebula, because it was the first part of the nebula to be discovered.

The nebula’s intense red output and its morphology are driven by the radiation emanating from a small group of stars near the nebula’s center. This open cluster of stars at the Heart’s heart, known as Melotte 15, contains a few bright stars nearly 50 times the mass of our Sun, and many more dim stars that are only a fraction of our Sun’s mass.

This image is comprised of 40 images of 4 min exposures each for a total integration of 2hrs 40mins. Each image was shot at 100 gain & 20 offset in a ZWO ASI071MC Pro camera cooled to 20f. 20 darks, 20 flats, 20 bias frames as calibration frames.

This nebula is in a late rising constellation in our summer months. I was able to begin imaging at 2AM and photographed continuously until a few minutes past 5AM. Do you see the heart? How about the fishhead? There’s also a soul nebula located just outside of this images frame. I’ll image that in the future. The FOV of my Z73 is just a touch to narrow to get them both in the same shot.

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Cheers!

Elephant’s Trunk Nebula

The Elephant’s Trunk Nebula is a concentration of interstellar gas and dust within the much larger ionized gas region IC 1396 located in the constellation Cepheus about 2,400 light years away from Earth. The piece of the nebula shown here is the dark, dense globule IC 1396A; it is commonly called the Elephant’s Trunk nebula because of its appearance at visible light wavelengths, where there is a dark patch with a bright, sinuous rim. The bright rim is the surface of the dense cloud that is being illuminated and ionized by a very bright, massive star (HD 206267) that is just to the east of IC 1396A.

The Elephant’s Trunk Nebula is now thought to be a site of star formation, containing several very young (less than 100,000 yr) stars that were discovered in infrared images in 2003. Two older (but still young, a couple of million years, by the standards of stars, which live for billions of years) stars are present in a small, circular cavity in the head of the globule. Winds from these young stars may have emptied the cavity.

The combined action of the light from the massive star ionizing and compressing the rim of the cloud, and the wind from the young stars shifting gas from the center outward lead to very high compression in the Elephant’s Trunk Nebula. This pressure has triggered the current generation of protostars.

Very happy to have captured this piece of our night sky from Burke County, NC. A very peaceful night here in the hills of the blue Ridge. Any questions or comments, we’d love to hear from you.

North America Nebula

My first target in Astrophotography was the North America Nebula framed with the Pelican Nebula. The name is obvious as this dust cloud really looks like the continent. There has been a lot of stuff to learn in photographing objects in our dark sky. The initial image is as you might expect – black with a few white dots! This version of the nebula is comprised of 48 images or 2 1/2 hours of exposure obtained over two nights of imaging. My first night was not very productive (learning curve is steep).

Once the images have been obtained they have to be debayered, aligned, registered and stacked. While PixInsight (PI) can do this, I prefer DeepSkyStacker (DSS) and feel it does a better job than my manual workings in PI. After stacking I do switch to PI for most of the processing and then Photoshop(PS) for the final tweaks.

All of this is run from my Acer Netbook, which I remotely manage from my home office (about 40 yards away). Image acquisition is totally performed with Astro Photography Tool (APT). Everything is intergrated via ASCOM drivers. It took over a month to understand all of the technology involved. I learned that capturing the photograph is only half the job! Truly looking forward to mastering this over the years.

As always my images can be seen in the Semper Iuvenis Galleries.

Astrophotography

As a result of the Covid-19 stuff I looked for an avenue of photography that did not involve travel or people. I had always wanted to photograph the moon or the Milky Way but lacked the equipment to to do it right and honestly didn’t think it achievable. I sought help on Youtube! Trevor Jones at Astrobackyard.com is awesome and his tutorials convinced me that I could photograph the night sky after all – and the investment is less than a single dive trip!

Stay tuned for images as clear night skies allow. As always my images are presented in the Semper Iuvenis Galleries. Cheers!