søndag 28. juni 2015

Cats and war and peace

There are a number of beautiful nebulas in the constellation of Scorpio. I have tried to image a few of them. The image below is a framing of two of them. The "Cat's Paw" nebula and the "War and Peace" nebula. The first one I understood the naming of. It is obviously a cat's paw. But the second I didn't. Read up on it, and the story is that in infrared, the scientists studying it, thought one part looked like a skull and the other like a dove. Hence War and Peace...
Anyhow. This image is a 6-hour exposure of this area. Taken over two nights in Namibia. For all the objects I imaged, I tried to keep them above 40 degrees altitude. This to minimize the difference in extinction between the highest and the lowest point during the night.

Tech details : Pentax K5, ISO640, 60x6 minutes for a total of 6 hours exposure, William Optics Zenithstar 71mm F/4.9 five-element flatfield apo, Skywatcher EQ6 mount, guided by QHY5II and PHD. Stacked in DSS, DDP by FitsLiberator, processed in PS and IrfanView.


2 kommentarer: