Two New Images

Dick Steinberg

February 4, 2010

On January 31, there were a couple of clear hours before moonrise and the
apparently inevitable onset of clouds. During that interval, I managed to grab
two new images.

First, a 50-minute exposure centered on IC1795, an emission nebula in
Cassiopeia, which is occasionally called the North Bear nebula, although it
looks more like a fish head to me. This object is about 1 degree NW of
the Heart Nebula (IC1805), of  which a portion is visible in the lower left
quadrant of the image. (North is up, west is right in all images).

ic1795_cass-50min.jpg

To point out some of the features visible in the image, I have prepared
a mouseover animation using a SkyMap Pro screen dump:

ic1795_mo/ic1795.html

Note the small open cluster Tombaugh 4 (2.5' diameter with brightest
star at mag 16.0) and the G2V star STF234 (=HD13864).

The other new image is of the nearby open cluster M45, the Pleiades. In this
35-minute exposure, quite a bit of nebulosity is visible, especially surrounding
the 4 brightest stars, starting at the topmost bright star Maia, and proceeding
clockwise to Electra, Merope and Alcyone.

m45-35min-ddp.jpg

I'd also like to offer a new version of the recent Horsehead nebula image:

horsehead%20nebula-30min-ddp.jpg

In this version, I applied a DDP (Digital Development Processing) technique in
MaxIm DL to suppress some of the excessively bright halos around the brightest
stars. Please compare to the older version

horsehead%20nebula-30min.jpg

As always, thanks for your comments.

Dick

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NP101-is -- Paramount ME -- Orion SS Pro v1 -- Blue Mountain Vista Observatory -- 5 min subs unguided