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Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Barnard 30, B30, project finalized





Barnard 30, a dark nebula in Sh2-264, in Orion
Ra 05h 31m 42s Dec +12° 12′ 39"



Image is in HST-palette, (HST=Hubble Space Telescope) from the emission of ionized elements, R=Sulfur, G=Hydrogen and B=Oxygen. Star colors are mixed from the NB channels, Red=H-a, G=O-III and B= 85%O-III + 15%H-a.


Last night I shot data for S-II & O-III channels (Ionized Sulfur and Oxygen). Very dim but enough for narrowband color composition. Total exposure time is relatively short due the low elevation.
I haven't seen this one in narrowband palette before, please, let me know, if you have seen an emission line image of Barnad 30 somewhere. I'll like to see one for a reference.

Barnard 30 is a dark nebula at Orion's head, due the proximity of eye catchers of Orion Nebula and low surface brightness, this target is rarely imaged.
B30 is part of the very large Sharpless object in Orion's head, Sh2-264. This large nebula spans 8 degrees of sky, that's 16 full Moons side by side, whole upper part of this image is covered with Sh2-264. Above image is about three degrees wide.
B30 lies about 1300 light years from Earth, above the triangular group of stars marking the head of constellation Orion.
Latest data from a Spitzer Space Telescope indicates, that this area is a star-birth region with many low mass stars and brown dwarfs.


Note. The size of the full Moon is marked as a gray circle for a scale. (Moon has an angular size of the 30', that's a 0,5 degrees)
Natural color composition from the emission of ionized elements, R=80%Hydrogen+20%Sulfur, G=100%Oxygen and B=85%Oxygen+15%Hydrogen to compensate otherwise missing H-beta emission. This composition is very close to a visual spectrum. 


Processing work flow:
Image acquisition, MaxiDL v5.07.
Stacked and calibrated in CCDStack. 
Levels, curves and color combine in PS CS3.

Equipments:
Tokina AT-X 300mm f2.8 @ f2.8
Platform and guiding, Meade LX200 GPS 12" @ f5
Camera, QHY9
Guider, Lodestar
Image Scale, 3,79 arc seconds/pixel

Exposures:
Baader H-alpha 7nm 9x1200s, binned 1x1
and 12x900s, binned 2x2
Baader O-III 8,5nm 3x900s, binned 2x2
Baader S-II 8nm 3x600s, binned 3x3


1 comment:

Unknown said...

Awesome photo! I've featured it as the "Photo of the Day" in the astrofreaks twitter feed, see: http://twitter.com/astrofreaks/status/47723473585451008