View allAll Photos Tagged 281...
NGC 281 is a nebula that lies ten thousand light years away. It is sometimes called "pacman nebula", but it doesn't look like pacman at all when framed as I did above.
It features large lanes and dense knots of dust and gas in which stars may still be forming. The open cluster of stars IC 1590 visible around the center has formed only in the last few million years. The lanes of dust visible left of center are likely homes of future star formation.
The localized "dark spots" visible against the bright nebula. are known as Bok globules.
Exposures:
- 7 x 30m subs in Ha (5nm)
Total exposure time: 3.5 hours
Acquired from my backyard on Dec 20, 2013
I don't usually stack such a small number of subs, but I wanted to test a new reducer and motorized focuser before storing the telescope away for the holidays.
Equipment:
Main Camera: QSI 583 WSG
Guide Camera: SXV Lodestar (on OAG)
Mount: Astro-Physics Mach 1
Scope: Celestron Edge HD 8" with 0.7x reducer (FL: ~1480mm)
Acquired, Registed, Calibrated and Stacked in MaximDL v5
Post Processed with PixInsight 1.8
Oh to be able to wear mismatched tights like a five year old can, without getting odd looks. Charlotte has quite an impressive tights collection and these are her favourite. Now it's gone colder again she's been begging to wear them.
We've had a good day; a lie in for me, then out for lunch and on to Farnham to visit Phil's brother and his family. We took Charlotte's bike and we went for a walk to the park, where the children played and the adults talked. We got home late on and bundled the children into bed (after an unmentionable bath incident from Sophie and some drawers almost falling on Charlotte - very scary moment) and now it's wine time.
T. came over to spend the night with me on Friday, and proved sleepovers just never go out of style. We made tacos (they were delicious!). I concocted mojitos that were way too limey, but on the second round Tina muddled the mint to death and that helped. We ate chocolate. We drank wine. We watched a movie (Beetlejuice) until we were falling asleep on the futon.
I really wish T. lived next door.
NGC 281 HaRGB in Menlo Park, CA Sept 2013
The RGB data came from sessions over 3 nights in variable conditions. I had to be aggressive in trimming the bad subexposures. I was also adjusting the flattener position during these sessions, leading to strange star images on the edge.
The Ha data came from Sept 15 with a past-first quarter moon blazing in the sky. The filter used is a 35nm wide filter, letting a fair amount of light through. The dark part of the sky in this set was pretty noisy.
Standard setup: Stellarvue SV4 scope with the modified and cooled Pentax K10D camera. Standard sub length of 1200 seconds at 100 ISO.
RGB: 18 total frames at 1200 seconds for 6 horus of integration.
Ha: 6 frames at 1200 seconds for 2 hours of integration.
Calibrated in Maxim (one set of RGB data had bad flats with moving dust motes)
Stacked in DSS (RGB and Ha stacked separately)
RGB and Ha registered in PixInsight via StarAlign.
Dead pixels in Ha were cleaned up.
Ha was run through TGVDenoise to improve the background a bit before merging via NBRGB script.
DBE on merged output. Masked stretch, Histogram stretch, MT, and TGVDenoise again to fix noisy background. Masked curves to drive background lower and boost midrange. Final step was to fix the dust motes from bad flats.
Here is the platesolve from PI:
Referentiation Matrix (Gnomonic projection = Matrix * Coords[x,y]):
-1.20093e-005 +0.000530235 -0.619397
-0.000530057 -1.20479e-005 +0.993858
+0 +0 +1
Projection origin.. [1847.500040 1209.999936]pix -> [RA:+00 52 00.19 Dec:+56 43 04.19]
Resolution ........ 1.909 arcsec/pix
Rotation .......... -88.710 deg
Focal ............. 648.29 mm
Pixel size ........ 6.00 um
Field of view ..... 1d 57' 33.8" x 1d 16' 59.8"
Image center ...... RA: 00 52 00.186 Dec: +56 43 04.19
Image bounds:
top-left ....... RA: 00 47 21.980 Dec: +57 42 22.66
top-right ...... RA: 00 47 17.187 Dec: +55 44 51.27
bottom-left .... RA: 00 56 58.081 Dec: +57 40 34.92
bottom-right ... RA: 00 56 24.072 Dec: +55 43 08.99
This shot was taken across the street from Flora Stevenson' s Primary School where I work (and play!)
See the finely dressed lady here promoting pensions by Scottish Widows. This appeared only late in 2008 and I thought it was a bit odd to use an Alexander Royale for the promotion with the bus itself due to be removed only a few months later. Surely it was chosen because the colour design (background, lettering and especially the dress) match perfectly with Lothian's madder red and white livery? But who is she? I caught up with Lindsay Strachan, Scottish Widows' Brand Consultant who gave this release:
'The ad came about as Lothian Buses have appointed Scottish Widows as their group pensions provider which then opened up opportunities for cost effective ad placement for us. The ad was placed on a vehicle selected by LB, so lucky as it may have been that the colours worked. I'm afraid I can't claim that it was a conscious decision. There are no plans to continue the
advertising further than the agreed January/February campaign and therefore it won't be transferred to another bus'.
And from the Scottish Widows magazine here's the bit you've all been waiting for....the girl of course!
Hayley Hunt is the new face of Scottish Widows and she paid a special visit to a Lothian Bus depot last autumn. Prior to the visit Hayley did a photo shoot on Edinburgh Castle Esplanade with a Lothian bus.
I would like to thank Paul Pope, who works with SW, for researching this information and for more details on who Haley Hunt is then go to the Pic 'n Mix set within this website and picture 51/55 for more on 281.
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