New Forest Observatory ®

Steve Cannistra needs no introduction as one of the very best amateur deep-sky imagers on the planet – and he holds down a responsible day job too 🙂  When I first started imaging it was Steve’s name and web site that I first chanced upon, I discovered Rob Gendler quite a while later.  Steve’s work has always highly impressed me (especially as he did a lot of great stuff with the little Sky 90 refractor) – but this fantastic image of the supernova remnant CTB1 in Cassiopeia really does it for me – especially as this is my Nemesis object.  My light pollution makes this faint one right at the limits of what I can capture with the IDAS filter and RGB one-shot colour camera, and I have a bunch of very unimpressive faint red smoke rings to prove it.  However – I have far from given up on this object and I will return to it with the mini-WASP array and some narrowband H-alpha filtering – that’ll get the little blighter!

However, as you can see, Steve managed to get a great image of the little blighter quite a while back, and it is one of the best images of this object that I have seen.  It’s an interesting story how I came across CTB1 in the first place.  There was an article in the “Practical Astronomer” magazine called “Six little clusters all in a row” which described a bunch of open clusters in Cassiopeia lying close together that could be seen in the field of view of a low-powered scope.  But what was much more interesting than the clusters that were being discussed was the “half a smoke ring” right at the top of the black and white image that was CTB1.  It just struck a chord – I thought this was one of the best deep-space objects I’d ever seen – and I wanted to get a great image of it.  That’s probably why it has fought back at me so long and hard 🙂

Well Steve beat it, and here are the details to go with his image:
Date:  Ha- September 19, 2008;  RGB- September 23, 2008
Scope:  Takahashi FSQ106 at f5 on the Takahashi NJP Mount
Autoguider:  SBIG ST-402 with 60mm guidescope, focal length 227mm
Camera:  STL11K -20C
Filters:  Baader RGB filter set; Baader 7nm Ha filter, all 50.8mm unmounted
Exposures:  Ha 360′; R 60′; G 60′; B 90′.  Total exposure 9.5 hours
Post-processing:  Calibrated, aligned, and Sigma Clip combined in Maxim, followed by DDP in ImagesPlus (IP).  Further processing in Photoshop CS (16 bit)

You can see a higher resolution image on Steve’s site here.

Thank you for sharing a great deep-sky image with us Steve!

This jaw-droppingly beautiful image of the M42 and “Running Man” region in Orion has been sent in from sunny Florida U.S.A. courtesy of Alan Chen.  I have known Alan for many years and have always admired his work, much of which has been acquired at the well-known “Chieflands” site in Florida.  The specs for this fantastic image are as follows:

10″ Homebuilt Newtonian.  Starlight Express SXV-H36 monochrome and SXV-M25 one-shot ccd camera.  Ha: 39×10 minutes (390 total) at f/4.6 Paracorr.  RGB: 34×4 minutes + 11×1 minutes (core) (135 total) at f/3 Keller Corrector.  Stacked and flattened in Maxim and processed/combined in PS.  Guided with SX OAG and SX guide head.  3.8.08 and 11.18.09.  Chiefland and Orlando, FL.  Alan as you can see from the above specs is also a Starlight Xpress man 🙂

A high resolution version of this image can be seen here.

M42, M43 and the Running Man all lie just below the Belt of Orion at a distance of 1,500 light-years.  M42 can be seen as a glowing patch of light with the naked eye and it blazes away at a massive magnitude 3.7 (which is pretty enormous for a nebula!).  This is an annual imaging target for most imagers each winter simply because it is so bright.  However rather than get a monotonous string of M42 images all looking alike, this object is pretty much unique in that I don’t think I’ve seen two images (taken by different people at different times) that look indistinguishable.  It is in the processing that the real beauty of M42 is revealed and as you can see Alan has done a remarkable job on his data, and it is in the processing that the uniqueness of each and every M42 image is created.  So, don’t worry about not getting your M42 published because “we’ve already had that one shown before” – so long as it is a breathtaking image – like this one – you stand a very good chance of it appearing on the “Deep-Sky Image of the Week”.

And – PLEASE – don’t think if it’s not colour I’m not interested.  I actually prefer negative black and white images with that beautiful “battleship grey” background for many faint objects that simply don’t do well in colour.  Not only do they look more “scientific” I think they simpler look better to the eye.

Until next weeks ground-breaking Deep-Sky Image – keep imaging!!

This week’s image is a superb ultra-deep offering of the Cocoon nebula from fellow PAIG member Harry Page – VERY nice Cocoon Harry!

The Cocoon nebula (IC5146, Caldwell 19) is a small emission nebula in the constellation Cygnus.  Why I particularly like this region is the Milky Way background and the long dark trailing nebulosity of Barnard 168.  Lying at a distance of 3,300 light years this small nebula only covers 10 x 10 arc minutes, so Harry is working at a longish focal length to get this frame.  Details from Harry are:

1) Lum 10 hrs SXVR H35

2) RGB 5Hrs SXVR H35

3) 14″ newt with orion optics corrector

4) Processed in Pixinsight

Thank you for a superb Image of the Week Harry 🙂