(Click on image for full size version)
| Description: | The ring nebula is one of the brightest
planetary nebula in the sky. It was formed when the central star, here visible as
blue, ejected its outer shell of material. 20 hours of H alpha data
was blended with the image to show a secondary and tertiary outer shell.
The latter is almost perfectly spherical. To the upper right is
IC1296, a small irregular galaxy. |
| Exposure Data: | 5/16-23/2005. L: 27x5m, Ha: 59 x 20m, RG:
15 x 5m, B: 15x7m. HaRGB binned 2x2. -25°C,
0.55 arc-sec./pixel. |
Processing: |
Multi-night automatic acquisition
and dithering via CCDAutoPilot2 and CCDSoft,
reduced and aligned, in Mira, L: 50 iterations RL decon, L+Ha combine, curves, levels,
Gradient Xterminator and other
processing in Photoshop. |
| Optical System: | 14.5” Ritchey-Chretien @ F/9 w/FFC, IMG6303E/CFW-7 CCD
camera, AstroDon filters, Paramount
ME, dithered 3 pixels, off-axis guided . |
| Comments: | The background is raised to show the very faint
tertiary shell. Total imaging time is 26 hours.
Here is the Ha data only. The Spitzer Space
Telescope also
imaged this object. |