Heart Nebula

View larger at EarthSky Community Photos | Image via Joshua Rhoades

A perfect image for Valentines Day!

Joshua Rhoades of Elkhart, Illinois took this photo of the Heart Nebula, a large cloud of ionized hydrogen gas illuminated by the numerous hot young stars embedded in it.

The Heart Nebula is an emission nebula – a nebula formed of ionized gases that emit light of various wavelengths – with glowing gas and darker dust lanes. It’s located some 7,500 light-years away, in the Perseus Arm of our Milky Way galaxy, in the direction to the constellation Cassiopeia the Queen.

Here are some tech details from Joshua about his image:

I captured this image using a Stellarvue 80mm refractor telescope with a Celestron Advanced VX mount auto guided with an Orion 60mm guidescope, and QHY 5L-II mono guide camera, and a Canon EOS T3i that has been modified by removing the LPF2 filter, thereby making it extremely sensitive to the wavelength of light emitted by ionized hydrogen.

Forty light frames were taken at ISO 400 and 240 seconds. Dark frames, flat frames, and bias frames were collected. Image processing completed in Pixinsight 1.8 and Photoshop CC with adjustments in Lightroom.

Thanks Joshua, and happy Valentine’s Day to all!

from EarthSky http://bit.ly/2GEw1KS

View larger at EarthSky Community Photos | Image via Joshua Rhoades

A perfect image for Valentines Day!

Joshua Rhoades of Elkhart, Illinois took this photo of the Heart Nebula, a large cloud of ionized hydrogen gas illuminated by the numerous hot young stars embedded in it.

The Heart Nebula is an emission nebula – a nebula formed of ionized gases that emit light of various wavelengths – with glowing gas and darker dust lanes. It’s located some 7,500 light-years away, in the Perseus Arm of our Milky Way galaxy, in the direction to the constellation Cassiopeia the Queen.

Here are some tech details from Joshua about his image:

I captured this image using a Stellarvue 80mm refractor telescope with a Celestron Advanced VX mount auto guided with an Orion 60mm guidescope, and QHY 5L-II mono guide camera, and a Canon EOS T3i that has been modified by removing the LPF2 filter, thereby making it extremely sensitive to the wavelength of light emitted by ionized hydrogen.

Forty light frames were taken at ISO 400 and 240 seconds. Dark frames, flat frames, and bias frames were collected. Image processing completed in Pixinsight 1.8 and Photoshop CC with adjustments in Lightroom.

Thanks Joshua, and happy Valentine’s Day to all!

from EarthSky http://bit.ly/2GEw1KS