The Lion Nebula

Virtually all the images captured by astrophotographers have scientific value. DSO pictures may be pretty, but they also enable us to see all kinds of things, from the way matter clumps in clouds, to the Bok Globules in which stars are born. Where does science stop and art begin? Are they complimentary, or exclusive?

In this regard, I’ve always felt a little guilty about making starless images. In many cases they look wonderful, but they are a distortion of the original image—information has been subtracted.

Last night, I imaged the Lion Nebula for about 90 minutes, and I combined this data with data from a year ago—again, about 90 minutes of integration time. The result was a fairly decent image of the nebula. But the Lion is in a densely starred region, and the stars made the subtle structures of the nebula hard to see.

Using Starnet GUI, I removed the stars and was astonished at the level of detail revealed. In this case, an “artistic” change enabled the perception of underlying scientific data, including the delicate swirls and eddies of the cloud and the dark condensations where stars are developing.

Here are 3 images—the starless Lion, a severe crop of that frame showing how well the data is preserved by the DS10C camera, and the original, starry image. Click to zoom—the 10C does an impressive job!