Fleming’s Triangular Wisp

In this stunning cosmic portrait, we are shown a celestial spectacle that showcases the scream of a dying star. The image is a tapestry woven by the filaments of glowing gas, a testament to the rich lives of stars and the beautiful remnants that they leave in their wake.

Chaotic in appearance, these tangled filaments of shocked, glowing gas are spread across planet Earth’s sky toward the constellation of Cygnus as part of the Veil Nebula. The Veil Nebula itself is a large supernova remnant, an expanding cloud born of the death explosion of a massive star. Light from the original supernova explosion likely reached Earth over 5,000 years ago. The glowing filaments are really more like long ripples in a sheet seen almost edge on, remarkably well separated into the glow of ionized hydrogen atoms shown in blue and oxygen in red hues. Also known as the Cygnus Loop and cataloged as NGC 6979, the Veil Nebula now spans about 6 times the diameter of the full Moon. The length of the wisp corresponds to about 30 light years, given its estimated distance of 2,400 light years. Often identified as Pickering’s Triangle for a director of Harvard College Observatory, it is also named for its discoverer, astronomer Williamina Fleming, as Fleming’s Triangular Wisp.

Image:

The full quality image is available for free download here: https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/53344911921_caa7d849d3_o.png

Details:

Telescope: Officina Stellare 700 RC
Camera: FLI PL16803
Filters: Astrodon Halpha, SII, OIII
Location: IC Astronomy, Oria, Almería, Spain
Date of Observations:  5/7/2022. 5/8/2022, 5/18/2022, 6/14/2022
SII: 14 x 600s (2h 20min)
Ha: 14 x 600s (2h 20min)
OIII: 14 x 600s (2h 20min)
Processing: Pixinsight
Credits: Data: Telescope Live; Processing: William Ostling

Processing:

Image integration
- Images were cosmetic corrected for hot pixels
- The subframes were weighted, registered, normalized, integrated, and drizzled in WBPP
Preparation of master frames:
- Stacking artifacts were cropped
- SHO were combined to create an RGB image
- RGB image was plate solved
- Starless DBE was applied to RGB as follows:
      - Starnet 2 was applied to a clone of the target image, creating an image with stars and an image without stars
      - DBE was applied on the starless image to create a background model
      - The background model was subtracted from the stars image
Deconvolution
- a PSF was created using the dynamic PSF process
- Linear starnet was applied to create a starless image and a star mask
- the linear image was duplicated, stretched, clipped, and convoluted to create a mask
- The starless image was deconvoluted using the RVC algorithm
- the stars were added back in
Noise Reduction
- DeepSNR noise reduction was applied to RGB
Non-Linear Adjustments:
- Histogram Stretch
- Curves transformation
- NoiseXterminator
- HDR
- More curves transformation
- Unsharpmask
- Exponential transformation