One of our Society (John G - please visit his blog: see link) bought a 2" UHC filter that he lent me, so being knowledgeable of the sky, and it being winter, I decided to try it out on a rather strange patch of nebulosity near Sirius called 'Thor's Helmet'. After screwing the filter in place on my Camera adaptor and refocusing, I did a range of exposures from 30 seconds to 3 minutes, all of the longer ones trailing, and some of the 30 second ones trailing also. I detrailed all the trailed ones using the filter manually in Paint Shop Pro 7 just as jpegs, and ran them through Deep Sky Stacker. I was struck with the beauty of the resulting picture that appeared in front of me. And when I processed them in PSP7 I was stunned with the result. DSS selected 18 exposures, most 30 seconds, 3 of about 70" and 2 about 3', but equivalent to ~30" because of the detrailing process, of which it took an adaptive weighted average. Thor's Helmet, NGC 2359, is 7º from Sirius and exists because of a frantic massive star, called a Wolf-Rayet star near its centre. There is Oxygen O III (or O2+) emission in the centre and Hydrogen clouds further out.
Showing posts with label NGC 2359. Show all posts
Showing posts with label NGC 2359. Show all posts
Thursday, 29 January 2009
A stellar tantrum
One of our Society (John G - please visit his blog: see link) bought a 2" UHC filter that he lent me, so being knowledgeable of the sky, and it being winter, I decided to try it out on a rather strange patch of nebulosity near Sirius called 'Thor's Helmet'. After screwing the filter in place on my Camera adaptor and refocusing, I did a range of exposures from 30 seconds to 3 minutes, all of the longer ones trailing, and some of the 30 second ones trailing also. I detrailed all the trailed ones using the filter manually in Paint Shop Pro 7 just as jpegs, and ran them through Deep Sky Stacker. I was struck with the beauty of the resulting picture that appeared in front of me. And when I processed them in PSP7 I was stunned with the result. DSS selected 18 exposures, most 30 seconds, 3 of about 70" and 2 about 3', but equivalent to ~30" because of the detrailing process, of which it took an adaptive weighted average. Thor's Helmet, NGC 2359, is 7º from Sirius and exists because of a frantic massive star, called a Wolf-Rayet star near its centre. There is Oxygen O III (or O2+) emission in the centre and Hydrogen clouds further out.
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