Spider Nebula

I have a few targets in the constellation of Auriga that I continue to look at capturing, some of which  were captured last winter, seems like a long time since I captured IC405 & 410 now, I should have a re process using what I have learnt over this last year from Pixinsight...But as for last night I managed 3hrs 50 mins of Ha data on  IC417 the Spider Nebula. I plan on an SHO image using 5 hours from each filter. As a start we have here an ASI air quick stack and screen stretch of the ha data. Looks lovely on the tablet but just a little processing via Pixinsight I have some lovely clean data and some lovely details too.

1. ASI AIR PRO stack & screen stretch.

2. Pixinsight process.

Using full calibration, Darks, Flats, Dark flats using WBPP script, 2 x Drizzle,

Automatic background subtraction, Blur Exterminator, Noise Exterminator, Histogram Transformation, Starnett++ Curves Transformation & PixelMath to re add the stars at 75%.

The are some interesting objects here in amongst the clouds of ionised hydrogen gas. We will start with 

IC 417 just left of centre of the image (also known as Sh2-234) is an emission nebula of almost 100 light-years across, located some 10,000 light-years away from Earth in the constellation of Auriga (the Charioteer). It is often referred to as the Spider Nebula and in that case its prey is a nearby (above) emission nebula called the Fly (NGC 1931).The nebula contains a young open cluster of about 40 stars, and is energized by its hot, massive blue stars which are still embedded in glowing hydrogen gas.

In the bottom right hand corner is the Charles Messier famed M38 open cluster a much closer 3480 light years and to it's left NGC1912 starfish cluster.

 3. Starless

I really love a starless image you can really explore the Ha regions here.

There will be a great deal more to add to this post as time moves into 2023, there will be at least 5 hours of Ha, Oiii & Sii data to create a SHO palette image. 

Malcolm. aka The Astrogeek

Horsehead Nebula

I would like to say the year would not be complete without an image of the beautiful Horsehead Nebula. This is one object that I just wish was half it's 1375 light years distance from us. It would truly be a spectacular sight filling the winter sky. I am hoping for some more clear sky to complete the HAGB project. So far we have 16 x 5 minute sub frames.

I am so incredibly pleased with my set up, a few people recently have posted issues with the ZWO EAF and I can honestly say thankfully I have had no issues with it achieving nothing short of perfect focus 100% of the time. So I thought I would do a serious crop of the horsehead and yes the Blur exterminator plugin has been run. It will certainly be after Christmas now for the remainder of the data for a HaGB colour image, Ha data looks great so far for 1 hour 20 minutes. 

M45

 

One the most recognisable objects in the night sky is the Pleidies or the 7 sisters. In Greek mythology they were the 7 daughters of the Titan Atlas & and his wife Pleione. Legend says with the weight of the world on Atlas’s shoulders he was unable to protect his daughters from the great hunter Orion, so In order to save them Zeus transformed them into stars placed them in the heavens away from Orion’s reach.

In reality the cluster contains more than three thousand young hot stars all formed within the last 100 million years with only the brightest visible to the naked eye. The blue nebula that is visible is a cloud of dust these cosmic wanderers are just passing through. My image here was captured over several recent clear nights and is a total of just over 3 hours through my telescope.

20 x 3 minute exposures for each Red, Green & Blue ZWO filters, processed in Pixinsight using the new Blur Exterminator plug in.

The Merope Nebula is the brightest reflection nebula in the Pleiades cluster. It is also known as Tempel’s Nebula. It was discovered by the German astronomer Wilhelm Tempel from Venice, Italy on October 19, 1859. Tempel used a 4-inch refractor to observe the famous open cluster.

You can also see here a small object about the 4.00 O'clock position. The nebula contains a small bright knot, designated IC 349, that is located only 0.06 light years from Merope. The knot was discovered by the American astronomer Edward Emerson Barnard in November 1890 and is also known as Barnard’s Merope Nebula. Barnard observed the knot using a 36-inch telescope at the Lick Observatory in California. IC 349 is about half an arc minute wide. It is the brightest part of the Merope Nebula because it lies so close to the central star. A recent capture from Hubble shows the knot being destroyed by 11km per second stellar winds.

 

The Jellyfish Nebula

30,000 years ago, our planet was in the grip of our last ice age, about the same time Neanderthals were painting the earliest images found in the caves of India. Above early man’s head in the night sky a super massive star has succumbed to the forces of gravity and collapses in on itself, the resulting supernova outshines every other star in the heavens. As we fast forward the thousands of years what we see now is the ever-expanding cloud of dust and gas resembling a jellyfish forever swimming in the cold inky black ocean. Imaged over the last two cold clear nights, nearly nine hours of data were needed to capture this cosmic Scyphozoa.

At the time of posting there has been a new Pixinsight plugin that is creating a great deal of attention by the incredible Russell Crowman. The Blur Xterminator plug in. So there will be an update shortly incorporating this into my workflow.

An except from Russel's Website. BlurXTerminator (rc-astro.com)

BlurXTerminator is an AI-based deconvolution tool designed specifically for astronomical images taken with equipment commonly used by amateur astrophotographers. It is available as a process module plug-in for PixInsight only.

Not all AI is created equal. AI-based sharpening tools for general photography exist but, when applied to astronomical images, they are prone to "inventing" detail that does not exist. They also don't usually handle stars very well. Their neural networks were not trained on astronomical images, so they often make bad "guesses" as to what the original, unblurred scene looks like.

The design intent of BlurXTerminator is to recover as much detail as possible based on low-contrast information actually present in an image, without fabricating detail that does not in fact exist just for the sake of an image that appears sharper. Great care has been taken in the architecture and training of the neural network to ensure that its output is as faithful as possible to reality if it is properly used.

Mosaic Sadr region

 

The mosaic consists of 4 images that have been aligned and stack