eevy24012
IC 63
The Ghost of Cassiopeia
This is IC 63 to the right (the Ghost Nebula) along with its companion IC 59 to the left. These lie 550 light years from earth in the constellation Cassiopeia. You may have noticed this constellation near the Milky Way in the northeast sky, it forms a "W" that is often used as a pointer to find the Andromeda Galaxy. The very bright star is Gamma Cassiopeiae, it is 19 times more massive than our sun and is 65,000 times brighter. It is a variable star that rotates at incredible speed that creates eruptions of mass into a surrounding disc. The mass loss is related to the brightness variations.
A most challenging object to process once the imaging data is obtained due to the bright star. It is a 2 component nebula both emission (light it emits) and reflection light from the star. It is non typical in photography capture as I used my red, green and blue broadband filters along with the hydrogen alpha narrowband. It's about 7 hours of time on the rgb filters split evenly and maybe 4 of ha narrowband. The rgb data was on 3 minute exposures and the ha on 5 minutes.
I learned to do a computerized meridian flip on the telescope so now my imaging plans are fully automated which means I can set it up, get it going and sleep while it takes photos.
IC 63
The Ghost of Cassiopeia
This is IC 63 to the right (the Ghost Nebula) along with its companion IC 59 to the left. These lie 550 light years from earth in the constellation Cassiopeia. You may have noticed this constellation near the Milky Way in the northeast sky, it forms a "W" that is often used as a pointer to find the Andromeda Galaxy. The very bright star is Gamma Cassiopeiae, it is 19 times more massive than our sun and is 65,000 times brighter. It is a variable star that rotates at incredible speed that creates eruptions of mass into a surrounding disc. The mass loss is related to the brightness variations.
A most challenging object to process once the imaging data is obtained due to the bright star. It is a 2 component nebula both emission (light it emits) and reflection light from the star. It is non typical in photography capture as I used my red, green and blue broadband filters along with the hydrogen alpha narrowband. It's about 7 hours of time on the rgb filters split evenly and maybe 4 of ha narrowband. The rgb data was on 3 minute exposures and the ha on 5 minutes.
I learned to do a computerized meridian flip on the telescope so now my imaging plans are fully automated which means I can set it up, get it going and sleep while it takes photos.