The Triangulum Galaxy and The Soul Nebula

A week or two ago, Society member Keith Elliot took us through a selection of his recent astrophotos. He has now processed two more images, so here they are along with the details behind them (again, you can click on each image for a larger version):

M33 (NGC 598) – Triangulum Galaxy (sometimes nicknamed “The Pinwheel”)

This picture is a composite of twelve 15 minute exposures taken at the Kelling Heath Autumn Equinox Star Camp this year.

M33 - Triangulum Galaxy

M33 is a large (64 x 35 arc minutes) face-on spiral galaxy in the constellation of Triangulum and is part of the Local Group of more than thirty gravitationally bound galaxies of which we are a member.  It is the third largest of the group, after Andromeda and our own Milky Way, and is about 2.8 million light years distant and 52,000 light years across.

The small pink star-like object at the edge of the left spiral, about halfway up the image, is the massive stellar nursery NGC 604. At 1300 light years across, it is 100 times larger than our own Orion Nebula.  This object has been beautifully photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope:

NGC604 (as taken by the HST) http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2003/30/image/a

 

Sh-2 199 – The Soul Nebula
This is a composite image of eleven 15 minute exposures taken from Chelmsford on the 21st and 22nd of this month.

It is an emission nebula, located in our galaxy, surrounding the cluster IC 1848 and is about 60 arc minutes across and 7,500 light years distant.

Sh-2 199 The Soul Nebula

The subframes were taken through a Lumicon DS filter, which is perfect for this type of image.  It  blocks light in the mid part of our visible range, populated by most light pollution sources, but passes the blue/green and red at each end of this spectrum. So colour images in light polluted back gardens become possible.

Sources
NASA website
Atlas of the Universe, Patrick Moore (1997)
Wikipedia
CCD Images of The Sharpless Catalog

Hardware and Software

• Modified Canon 350 DSLR. The internal infrared filter has been replaced with a sharper cut-off filter to extend the red end of its spectral response, particularly to give improved sensitivity to the hydrogen alpha line.
• Starlight express SXV guide camera in a separate, piggy backed, guiding telescope (70mm f/10).
• Televue x0.8 focal reducer/field flattener to give a plate scale of 2.2 arc seconds per pixel (1.8 without the reducer).
• William Optics ZS 105, f/7 apochromatic refractor.

Keith Elliott
October 2008

 

 

October Public Meeting – Discovering Supernovae with Tom Boles

This month’s public meeting featured a talk by world renowned supernovae hunter Tom Boles, who took us through the methods, motivations and rewards of his work at his Coddenham Observatory where he patrols the night sky detecting, imaging & reporting supernovae – the luminous explosions of aging massive stars. Tom is one of the leading amateurs in the world for supernova detection, having discovered over 100 such events.

The Society also had on display it’s new Lottery funded telescopes:

Public meeting attendees with the new telescopes and Tom Boles (far right)

CCD Camera First Light

The new CCD camera (Atik 16ic) was installed in the observatory last night, and during the setup process we tested it on a few random targets and took a few snapshots. Here are those initial test unfiltered images:

Albireo - double star in Cygnus (1 second exposure)

 

Messier 57 - Ring Nebula (10 second exposure)

The Jovian satellites (0.01 second exposure)

Lunar craters (0.001 second exposure)

Nothing too spectacular, so far, but with more use and practice we hope to be using it for both imaging and photometry projects in the coming year.

Images: Taken by David Warrington, Ken Salmon, Stuart Grainger.

Equipment: Meade 12″ LX200, Atik 16ic

Pacman, Bubble and the Tulip – astro-imaging showcase

Society member Keith Elliott has submitted the following images for your viewing pleasure. Here’s his report – you can click on the images for larger versions.

NGC 281, The Pacman Nebula in Cassiopeia

This picture is a composite of 12, 15 minute exposures made through a Hydrogen-alpha filter, so, the otherwise red image, has been desaturated to black and white. It was taken in my back garden in Chelmsford at the beginning of October this year.

Pacman Nebula NGC 281

 

The nebulous area is about 35 arc minutes across and 10,000 light years distant. It is an area of new (about a million years old) and forming stars, probably in the dark, dust lane, regions of the nebula. The very small open cluster (IC 1590) near the centre contains the smaller group of bright stars that is illuminating this nebula.

NGC 7635, The Bubble Nebula and M52 in Cassiopeia

This picture is a composite of 9, 15 minute exposures taken under the beautiful dark skies of Kelling Heath at this years Autumn Equinox Star Camp.

They are an often photographed pair, ideal for wide field imaging with small, short focal length telescopes.

M52 is the small open cluster of more than 150 stars, of magnitude 8 or fainter, and 13 arc minutes across, in the right half of the picture. It was first recorded by Charles Messier in 1774. The distance is not well known, but is in the ball park of 5,000 light years.

 

Bubble Nebula NGC 7635

 

The spectacular Bubble Nebula (NGC 7635), on my astronomical A-list, is an apparent bubble floating in a sea of red gas. It is 3 arc minutes or 6 light years across and 7,000 light years away. The bubble is expanding at the unbelievable speed of 4 million miles per hour! It was formed by the stellar wind from the blue, 8^th magnitude, central star blasting into the surrounding denser material. This central star, at some 40 times the mass of our own Sun, is living a predictably short and very violent life.

Sh2-101, The Tulip Nebula in Cygnus

The second Sharpless catalogue (Sh2), published by Stewart Sharpless in 1959 is a catalogue of over 300 large nebulae, many of which are suitable for wide field, narrow band imaging. In other words great for small refractors under light polluted skies.

 

The Tulip Nebula Sh2-101

This tulip flower shaped nebula, taken in June this year, in Chelmsford, is a composite of 24, 10 minute exposures, taken over two nights, using an H alpha filter. The star that looks over exposed, but is in fact surrounded by nebulous gas, in the top right, is Eta Cygni.

The Tulip is an emission nebula about 20 arc minutes across and 8,000 light years distant.

Just over half way back to the Tulip from eta cygni on the picture, and making an angle of about 45 degrees is a close pair of bright stars. The brighter, 9^th magnitude star, has an optically invisible, but strongly x-ray emitting partner, the famous Cygnus X-1. This was the first object discovered that was considered likely to be a Black Hole.

Hardware and Software

• Modified Canon EOS350D DSLR. The internal infra red filter has been replaced with a sharper cut off filter to extend the red end of its spectral response, particularly to give improved sensitivity to the hydrogen alpha line.

• Starlight express SXV guide camera in a separate, piggy backed, guiding telescope (70mm f/10).

• Televue x0.8 focal reducer/field flattener to give a plate scale of 2.2 arc seconds per pixel (1.8 without the reducer).

• William Optics ZS 105, f/7 apochromatic refractor.

• Losmandy GM8 mount.

• MaxIm DL for camera control, guiding input and focusing, via a laptop, and for image calibration and registration.

• Photoshop CS3 for post processing.

Sources

• NASA website
• Celestial Objects for Modern Telescopes, Michael A Covington.
• CCD Images of the Sharpless Catalogue

Keith Elliott

October 2008

Astrarium – Astronomy Radio

There is a new astronomy radio show called Astrarium being broadcast out of Queen’s University, Ontario every Tuesday and the presenter is James Silvester, PhD candidate at the university’s Physics department and former guest speaker at NEAS (he’s also a friend of mine from when I studied at University of Hertfordshire.)

Topics so far include dark matter, cosmology and the Large Hadron Collider.

The radio show is streamed from www.cfrc.ca, but if you can’t listen to it live you can download the shows as podcasts here.

October in astronomy history

400 YEARS AGO THIS MONTH

On the 2nd October 1608, the Dutch lens maker Hans Lippershey demonstrated the first practical telescope to the Dutch parliament. He is thought to have been the first to try and patent the invention, which could provide the user with roughly three times magnification. (However, legend has it that Lippershey got the idea after seeing some children playing around with his lenses in a telescopic fashion…)

50 YEARS AGO THIS MONTH

On the 11th October 1958, Pioneer 1 became the first spacecraft to be launched by NASA. The mission objective was to study the radiation, magnetic fields, and micrometeorites of the Earth/Moon environment, but due to a malfunction at launch it never acheived its intended lunar orbit. It did reach an altitude of nearly 114,000km above the Earth though and was the most successful of the early “Thor-Able” craft.