Try increasing gamma if dark sections aren't distinguished

Try increasing gamma if dark sections aren't distinguished

Thursday, May 11, 2017

starburst nebula NGC 1569, narrow band

Here's starburst nebula NGC 1569 in hydrogen (Ha) and oxygen (OIII)

this sat on my hard drive for a year as i was initially disappointed for 2 reasons:
1 there was little difference between the OIII and Ha at this resolution besides signal strength
2 the narrow band and LRGB (below) were so discordant, i couldn't imagine the combine working well.  the Ha didn't enhance the image, it overwhelmed it.

here it is in LRGB:

when i finally combined the narrow and broad band images i was pleasantly surprised to see the sum adding up to more than the parts, even though some details of each were lost in the combination.
the combined image gives the classic appearance of stars clearing out and illuminating the surrounding hydrogen:
in this case the two bright "stars" appearing to illuminate the surrounding nebula are unresolved globular clusters containing thousands of stars (anyone fooled?), making this dwarf galaxy the largest "nebula" i've ever imaged

here's an interesting slow motion blink of the two images
some structures disappear, others appear, and others seem to move (lower left) as if being illuminated by a nearby source:



lastly here's an annotated mosaic:


more details on dwarf galaxy ngc 1569 at this site including observations of the "elephant's trunk" to the right
hubble image resolving the star clusters and more details at wikipedia
interestingly, the galaxy is blue-shifted, which means it's moving towards us, rather than moving away with the expansion of the universe.  

thanks to rick johnson for pointing out this galaxy with it's extreme narrow band emissions.

image details:

8" LX200R, SX Trius 694 binned x2 to 0.8"/px,
astrodon 5nm Ha, 3nm OIII, LRGB E SERIES GEN-II
ASA DDM60
L 472x1 minute, 24x3 minutes, R 64x3 minutes, G 59x3 minutes, B 55x3 minutes (RGB included in luminance)
Ha 25x20 minutes, OIII 11x20 minutes.
1/29/16-2/8/16, bortle white skies
eastbluff, CA

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