Here's a reprocessed image of the Pelican, showing some of the fine detail in the core region. The Pelican Ridge is about 10 light years long. The tortuous shapes in the cloud are sculpted by massive, hot, young stars. This view shows the deep turbulence in the nebula. If you look closely at gthe long tendril (click to enlarge), you can see the bright, twin jets emerging from protostar Harbig-Haro 555.
 |
 |
| A Starless Tulip The imge below is enhanced to show stars. The position of the companion star to the Cygnus X1 black hole is ringed in blue.  The final image is a wide field image showing the nebula embedded in a wider area of nebulosity in Cygnus.  |
When the moon is bright, as it was last night, I focus on imaging the brighter narrowband objects. A few days ago, I imaged the fainter, Western Veil and Pickering's Triangle. Last night, I imaged the Eastern Veil, and managed around 100 minutes of integration with the RASA 8 and DS10C (NBZ filter) before the clouds moved in.
The Veil is a supernova remnant created by a star if about 20 solar masses some 10,000 years ago. William Herschel discovered the nebula on Sept. 5, 1784 and described it as streams of branching nebulosity. Our modern cameras can tease out the remarkable complexity of this nebula. NGC 6992 is particularly complex and it sometimes called the "Network Nebula." The captured images show this wonderful complexity, especially the first image, which is a close, starless crop of the original image capture.
I’ve said before that I believe we are in the Golden Age of
amateur astro imaging. I see wonderful images every day taken from backyard
telescope that would have been impossible with large, observatory class
telescopes not that long ago. For a relatively modest investment, we can buy superb
optics, wonderful imagers, and mounts that guide with sub-arcsecond resolution.
Amazing when you think about it!
Last night, I took an image of the Pacman Nebula with the
RASA 8 and DS10C with just over 2 hours of integration time (30 second subs).
The cropped “heart of Pacman” shows why its great to be an imager today. The
DS10C supported a huge crop, and still preserved lots of detail. The excellence
of the optics of the RASA 8—a mass produced scope, are also evident (to say
nothing of the free software bundles that make all this possible, too).
 |
The original image captured and stacked:
This post is to document the effects of a new workflow using Affinity Photo. This workflow removes the stars from the original image, optimizes processing on the nebula, and then adds the stars back in to the starless image. The result is an image that shows much more nebular detail and preserves the stars.
Original, starred image:
Starless image
Blended Image
The Cygnus Star Cloud (Sh2-101) is a rich area of star formation. This image shows the cluster NGC 6871 as well as the Tulip Nebula. I've also included a starless image of the gas and dust that looks a little like an oil painting.
Tech card: 98 minutes total integration time (40s subs); RASA 8; DS10C; NBZ filter.
The Western Veil Nebula (aka the Witch's Broom Nebula, NGC 6960 and Sharpless 103) is a beautiful supernova remnant Born around 10,000 years ago, this delicate web of gas shows shell-like structures as it expands into the interstellar medium. Note the subtle difference in the distribution of stars above the upper part of the nebula (the Witch's Broom itself) and below it. Above the nebula, invisible dust is obscuring stars, below it, the shock wave of the supernova has cleared it away. The bright star in the image (52 Cygni) is a foreground object and is not associated with the nebula.
Below NGC 6960 is the much fainter Pickering's Triangle. It was discovered in 1904 by Williamina Fleming, but the credit for the discovery went to the director of the observatory, Edward Charles Pickering (which was customary at that time).
I've included a starless version of the image, which shows in great detail the complexity and delicacy of this wonderful region.
Tech card: RASA 8; DS10C; NBX filter. 2+ hours of integration (individual frames from 24-40 seconds).
This is a 4.5 hour integration of the Pelican Nebula, taken with a Dwarf 3 scope. Stacked and processed in Stellar Studio and Photoshop PS.
