Friday, July 22, 2016

M57 Remastered

This is an image of Messier 57 nebula obtained using frames captured in the night from 16 to 17 of June 2016 with Canon EOS 600D + Canon EF-S F/4-5.6 55-250mm IS II lens (@ 250mm; F/7) fixed at EQ5 motorized mount.

The nebula is a remnant of a star, which ended active life and expelled its outer layers. A core of the dead star -- a white dwarf -- could be hardly distinguished in the center of the nebula.
Greenish color of the nebula is caused by double-ionized oxygen; a reddish color of outer layers corresponds to hydrogen and ionized nitrogen. A density of glowing gas is very small yet many times denser than interstellar medium.
Estimated size of the nebula is about a light-year, a distance to it is ~2300 light-years.



The previous image was made using DeepSkyStacker: good yet not perfect program. This picture (which is definitely more realistic) is a result of stacking of 40 frames (30s exposure each) using FITStacker program. Images were calibrated and aligned using IRIS (15 offsets, 15 darks, and 15 flats were used for calibration).

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