Sunday, November 8, 2015

Sharpless 132 - my first unguided image

Sharpless 132 is an emission/dark nebula in Cepheus:
(click on image for full resolution)

It is about 10,000 light years away from earth in the Perseus arm of the Milky Way. It's ionized by two Wolf-Rayet stars: HD 211853 in the middle of this photo and HD 211564 (not visible in this image). Many stars in this nebula are relatively young and of the same age which indicates that they were born out of the nebula - but the process seems to have stopped.

This is my first unguided image. I took 80+ images with only very few that showed star trails. Those were mostly in areas of the sky where I didn't calibrate my model (my horizon in TSX isn't 100% accurate).

This nebula has a lot of fainter regions further out. But those aren't too strong in narrowband but more in visible light. Maybe in the future I will image this nebula again from a darker side with a larger chip.

No comments:

Post a Comment