Carl Kwadrat
Rim Nebula (Hubble Palette) NGC 6188
The Rim Nebula is visible to observers in the Earth’s southern hemisphere. It is located within the boundaries of the constellation Ara. Ara is the Latin name for altar. The nebula is about 4,000 light years away from Earth. The light that was captured to produce this photo left NGC 6188 around 2,000 BC to make its long 4,000-year journey to finally be captured by the camera that was used to acquire the Flickr photo. Agriculture was just beginning to be established in northern Europe when light from the Rim Nebula started on its journey to finally reach the sensor in the astrograph’s camera.
The Rim Nebula is a young star forming system of predominantly ionized hydrogen gas. The massive blue hot stars that have already formed out of the nebula are producing strong stellar winds that are sculpting out regions in the ionized hydrogen gas cloud. The Rim Nebula is an emission nebula which is a stellar factory bringing new stars into existence from the interstellar dust and hydrogen gas.
One of the interesting natural structures in the nebula’s formation is the fighting dragons of Ara. The heads and necks of the two fighting dragons that are in head-to-head combat can be visualized just below the bright blue-green region of the photo.
The open star cluster NGC 6193 provides the energy needed to illuminate the Rim Nebula. Young hot massive blue stars provide the strong ultra-violet light that stimulates the gas in NGC 6188 to glow. The open star cluster is located in the brightest blue-white central region above the dueling dragons of Ara.
Three narrowband science filters were used to capture the Hubble Palette image of the Rim Nebula. These are the narrowband ionized hydrogen HII, the doubly ionized oxygen OIII, and the singly ionized sulfur filters that provide the green, blue, and reddish-brown areas of the photo, respectively, providing a quasi-3D perspective to a 2D image.
The CHI-6 astrograph used to capture the image of NGC 6188 is located at El Sauce Observatory in the Rio Hurtado Valley in the high-altitude Atacama Desert of Chile where the sky is pristine and 320 nights of the year are clear. The CHI-6 astrograph is optically composed of an Officina Stellara RH200 200 mm (8 inch) diameter reflecting telescope with a photographic speed of f/3. The imaging system attached to CHI-6 is the Finger Lakes Instrumentation FLI ML 16200 Monochrome CCD astronomical imaging camera. AstroDon 3 nm narrowband scientific color filters (SII, HII, and OIII) were inserted between the telescope and the camera to acquire the complete set of images used to make the final False Color image of my Flickr photo. A total of 2.1 hours of exposure time on CHI-6 was acquired to produce this image.
The following software was used to process the calibrated image data from AUS-2: Astro Pixel Processor, PixInsight, and Photoshop.
Rim Nebula (Hubble Palette) NGC 6188
The Rim Nebula is visible to observers in the Earth’s southern hemisphere. It is located within the boundaries of the constellation Ara. Ara is the Latin name for altar. The nebula is about 4,000 light years away from Earth. The light that was captured to produce this photo left NGC 6188 around 2,000 BC to make its long 4,000-year journey to finally be captured by the camera that was used to acquire the Flickr photo. Agriculture was just beginning to be established in northern Europe when light from the Rim Nebula started on its journey to finally reach the sensor in the astrograph’s camera.
The Rim Nebula is a young star forming system of predominantly ionized hydrogen gas. The massive blue hot stars that have already formed out of the nebula are producing strong stellar winds that are sculpting out regions in the ionized hydrogen gas cloud. The Rim Nebula is an emission nebula which is a stellar factory bringing new stars into existence from the interstellar dust and hydrogen gas.
One of the interesting natural structures in the nebula’s formation is the fighting dragons of Ara. The heads and necks of the two fighting dragons that are in head-to-head combat can be visualized just below the bright blue-green region of the photo.
The open star cluster NGC 6193 provides the energy needed to illuminate the Rim Nebula. Young hot massive blue stars provide the strong ultra-violet light that stimulates the gas in NGC 6188 to glow. The open star cluster is located in the brightest blue-white central region above the dueling dragons of Ara.
Three narrowband science filters were used to capture the Hubble Palette image of the Rim Nebula. These are the narrowband ionized hydrogen HII, the doubly ionized oxygen OIII, and the singly ionized sulfur filters that provide the green, blue, and reddish-brown areas of the photo, respectively, providing a quasi-3D perspective to a 2D image.
The CHI-6 astrograph used to capture the image of NGC 6188 is located at El Sauce Observatory in the Rio Hurtado Valley in the high-altitude Atacama Desert of Chile where the sky is pristine and 320 nights of the year are clear. The CHI-6 astrograph is optically composed of an Officina Stellara RH200 200 mm (8 inch) diameter reflecting telescope with a photographic speed of f/3. The imaging system attached to CHI-6 is the Finger Lakes Instrumentation FLI ML 16200 Monochrome CCD astronomical imaging camera. AstroDon 3 nm narrowband scientific color filters (SII, HII, and OIII) were inserted between the telescope and the camera to acquire the complete set of images used to make the final False Color image of my Flickr photo. A total of 2.1 hours of exposure time on CHI-6 was acquired to produce this image.
The following software was used to process the calibrated image data from AUS-2: Astro Pixel Processor, PixInsight, and Photoshop.