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Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Jones-Emberson 1, the project continues


The Jones-Emberson 1, project continues. I shot five more hours of O-III (light emitted by an ionized Oxygen.) to this planetray nebula. The area of O-III seems to be more extended, than most of the images around are showing.  

At previous mail, I wrote about a possible outer halo in this PN. I have not collected enough information to confirm it, even though I shot five more hours with my fast imaging system, Tokina AT-X 300mm f2.8 lens, UHCs-filter and QHY8 camera. It's very much possible, that there is nothing after all but we'll see at end of the next season, spring 2014. 

Generally the new O-III data gives a softer look to this extremely dim planetary  nebula. The total exposure time is now ~36h, with wide field color data. 


Jones-Emberson 1
Ra 07h 57m 51.628s   Dec +53° 25′ 16.96
PK 164+31.1 a planetary nebula in Lynx

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A cropped full size image, this is a large object as a planetary nebua.
Image is in visual spectrum and dominated by the red light emitted by ionized Hydrogen, H-alpha. Blueish hues are from ionized Oxygen, O-III. Some of the colors are shot simultaneously with H-a emission by using QHY8 color camera, Tokina AT-X 300mm f2.8 camera lens and Baader UHCs-filter.


A wider field

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INFO

There are many background galaxies in this image but they are not showing very well, due to narrowband imaging method. Galaxies and stars are broadband targets and they dim down much, when narrowband filters are used. I'll like to be able to shoot this from a dark location with a LRGB-method.

 largish and very dim, planetary nebula.PK 164+31.1, sometimes known as a "Jones-Emberson 1" has an angular diameter of 6', 67" x 6', 67" and it locates in constellation Lynx. Distance from my home town Oulu, Finland, is about 1600 light years.
The tiny Blue central star is a white dwarf, the intense ultraviolet light emitted by this star makes elements in a ring glow. Ionized Hydrogen emits red light and the ionized Oxygen blue one. 

Why the name "PK 164+31.1"?
PK comes from the names of Czechoslovakian astronomers Perek and Kouhutec. 1967 they created an extensive catalog of all of the known planetary nebulae in  1964. The number indicates the position in the sky. The alternative name "Jones-Emberson 1" is after its discoveries.

Five hours of new O-III data
Shot at 25.03. 2013

This image shows an example about my processing technique. I'm using a special technique of mine to dig out a very weak signal. The upper image shows a stacked, calibrated and heavily stretched 5h exposure of an O-III light.  The image below shows the same data after star removing procedure . The signal from the ionized oxygen is then stretched much more and smoothed out by using a median filtering, 5x5, and some gaussian blur.


Technical details

Processing work flow:
Image acquisition, MaxiDL v5.07.
Stacked and calibrated in CCDStack2.
Levels, curves and color combine in PS CS3.

Optics, Meade LX200 GPS 12" @ f5
Camera, QHY9
Guiding, SXV-AO, an active optics unit, and Lodestar guide camera 5Hz
Image Scale, ~0,8 arc-seconds/pixel


Exposures

H-alpha 21x1200s, binned 1x1 = 8h (A new set from the spring 2013.)
(Older sets from Spring 2010)
H-alpha 32x1200s, binned 2x2 and 7x1200s, binned 3x3 = 13h 
O-III 2x600s, binned 4x4 and 1x1200s, binned 4x4 = 1h
O-III 15x1200s, binned 1x1, = 5h (A new set from the spring 2013.)
S-II 3x600s, binned 4x4 and 1x1200s, binned 4x4 = 1h 20min.
+
Color exposures with QHY8 single shot color camera, spring 2013
48x600s exposures with UHC-sfilter = 8h



A single unprocessed 1200 second frame of H-a emission

A single 20 min. frame, just calibrated and nonlineary stretched to visible. 
Imaged with the QHY9 camera, Baader 7nm H-alpha filter and Meade LX200 12" telescope.

Color data

This is a image used for colors only, it doesn't need to be high resolution, nor pretty, since there are very litle details in other than H-a channel.

A UHCs filtered data from Tokina AT-x 300mm f2.8 camera lens, total 8h.





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