Dust and starbirth in Perseus: NGC 1333 and IC 348

This is another image from telescope live – a widefield of the Perseus region, including IC 328 and NGC 1333. It was a pretty tough dataset to work with, as there were a ton of gradients that were hard to get rid of. I decided to try SPCC in pixinsight on this dataset, and it seems to work pretty well. I couldn’t notice a really significant different between PCC and SPCC, but SPCC seems to work faster for me. IC 348 is a star-forming region in the […]

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Reflection and emission in SH2-311: The skull and crossbones nebula

Yet another image from telescope live. This was a super fun dataset to work with – even though the total integration time was only 6h 40min, the data was very clean and easy to play with. I decided to experiment with a way to separate broadband reflection and H-alpha emission using continuum subtraction only from LRGB data. Even though this method isn’t very “scientific,” it does an extremely good job of letting me enhance different parts of the nebulae. I haven’t seen many LRGB images of this […]

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Peering into the faint outer halo of Messier 83

This is another image from the archives of telescope live – the spiral galaxy M83. I noticed while processing that this dataset was deep enough to include a fainter outer halo that I couldn’t find, so I wanted to show as much of this new halo as I could. It was tricky to balance the brightness of the core with the brightness of the outer halo, but using some pixelmath tricks in conjunction with HDR and GHS I think I was able to do a pretty good […]

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Unbarred Spiral Galaxy NGC 3981

This is another image from the telescope live archives. The data supplied was very hard to work with – the dead CCD rows had some sort of glow that couldn’t be calibrated out, so I had to model the irregular glow on my own using DBE and then subtract it out. I’ve also been trying out the new DeepSNR noise reduction module for pixinsight which seems to remove chroma noise from RGB data quite efficiently. It’s pretty cool to look at the full-quality version of this image […]

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The Eagle and Omega Nebula in the Hubble Palette

This is another image using Telescope Live data – this was imaged using a super fast and wide telescope from Australia The H-alpha data was extremely high quality, and overall editing this was really fun. I’ve been trying out some new techniques to increase contrast and depth in wide nebulosity fields. and I think it worked out really well in this image. Also, after several iterations of color edits, I’ve discovered a pretty nice way to create an SHO image without using colormasks or other destructive processes […]

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Sh2-223, Sh2-224, Sh2-225, Sh2-227 widefield

Sh2-224 is a supernova remnant visible in the constellation of Auriga. It is situated 3.5 ° to SSE of the bright star Capella, the dominant star of the constellation. It is formed by two soft nebulous filaments, the most conspicuous of which is that of the northwest and extends for 20 ‘x 30’ towards the center of the source of radio waves, which has dimensions of 70 ‘x 75’. The object has an unusual shape, with a shell structure with a radius of about 25 parsec, and […]

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NGC 2170: The Angel Nebula

Is this a painting or a photograph? In this classic celestial still life composed with a cosmic brush, dusty nebula NGC 2170, also known as the Angel Nebula, shines near the image center. Reflecting the light of nearby hot stars, NGC 2170 is joined by other bluish reflection nebulae, a red emission region, many dark absorption nebulae, and a backdrop of colorful stars. Like the common household items that still life painters often choose for their subjects, the clouds of gas, dust, and hot stars featured here […]

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A 62-hour widefield image of Orion

Edit 2/11/2023: This image was featured by NASA’s universe view screen Instgram, Astronomy Magazine’s image of the day: https://astronomy.com/photos/picture-of-day/2023/02/a-wide-view-of-orion, and the Amateur Astronomy Image of the Day: https://www.aapod2.com/blog/M42 The dark Horsehead Nebula and the glowing Orion Nebula are contrasting cosmic vistas. Adrift 1,500 light-years away in one of the night sky’s most recognizable constellations, they appear in opposite corners of the image. The familiar Horsehead nebula appears as a dark cloud, a small silhouette notched against the long red glow at the lower left. Alnitak is the […]

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Spiral Galaxy NGC 3147 from Hubble

The graceful, winding arms of the majestic spiral galaxy NGC 3147 appear like a grand spiral staircase sweeping through space in this Hubble Space Telescope image. They are actually long lanes of young blue stars, pinkish nebulas, and dust in silhouette. The beauty of the galaxy belies the fact that at its very center is a malnourished black hole surrounded by a thin, compact disk of stars, gas, and dust that have been caught up in a gravitational maelstrom. The black hole’s gravity is so intense that […]

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Orion Widefield

Cradled in cosmic dust and glowing hydrogen, stellar nurseries in Orion the Hunter lie at the edge of a giant molecular cloud some 1,500 light-years away. Spanning nearly 25 degrees, this breath-taking vista stretches across the well-known constellation from head to toe (left to right). The Great Orion Nebula, the closest large star forming region, is right of center. To its left are the Horsehead Nebula, M78, and Orion’s belt stars. Image: Annotated Image: Equipment: Acquisition: Processing:

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