Nebula NGC 281 in Mapped Color

Comments welcome.

Awesome Image. What kind of Camera? What size telescope? What exposure length?

I bet I can't do this with my 20D :) Details would be great as already posted. Thank you for sharing. I also don't rate nudes and nebulas because I don't know enough to do it but if I had to guess I would say this is a great photo.

Thanks, guys. Sorry about the lack of details... had trouble adding new stuff to the list.

 

Telescope: 20" f/8 RC Optical Systems Ritchey-Chretien Cassegrain. Camera: SBIG STL-11000XM. Exposure: 5 hours sulfur-II, 21 hours hydrogen-alpha, 4 hours oxygen-III.

 

Thanks for sharing Russel. Not that I understood any of that specifications but once again my amazing analisys ability proved me right: I can't do that on a 20D :)) Great job Russel and see you soon ---- p.s.: Just one more question. Did you had any trouble a finding a category on PN to place the photo?

Quiet stunning Russell. Not your average astro shot. Such a long exposure wow, it is amazing that cameras can see in the dark, so to speak. I could look at this all day. Congrats.

This is an amazing shot. I love it!

Fantastic shot Russel! Looks as good as a Hubble Space Telscope shot! I love the false colors.

Great job!

Amazing.........regards

Extraordinary capture. Very impressive

excellent...may be you should try a different composition angle !

 

Just kidding!

really leaves me speechless.

Looks very much like those taken by Hubble.

would be very interesting to have explanations for the different structures to which they correspond in the universe ?

WOW. Wonderfull.

an astronomical explication...

 

This is a gasious nebula, which is to say its a big blob of gas that looks like it is forming stars in one of the spiral arms of our galaxy. The gases are falling into blobs under gravity that will become stars, the different colors show the chemical distribution of the gas cloud. The reason this works is that each element emits and absorbs light only at very specific colors, So for example Hydrogen's 3->2 quantum trasition emits deep red light at 656.4 nm. Other elements at other places on the spectrum. So you can isolate each with a specific filter, and then combine them to form this.

 

BTW if anyone want to take a swing at this kind of thing without going and getting access to huge telescope much of the past data from hubble and other big telescopes can be downloaded on the web. That being said going from a raw FITS file to this takes a hell of a lot of skill.

 

Anyhow this is an amazing piece of work, thank you for sharing it with us!

The technical aspects are a bit beyond me - but it goes to show that for form, colour and sheer beauty nature beats Photoshop every time.

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Spectacular! That is all I can say...

breathtaking... what can i say more...

20" RC ?!?! you have access to an observatory or filthy rich!?! lol