FINALLY a Couple Clear Nights - The Heart Nebula (maybe my best one yet)

[Colorado CJ]

With all the smoke and clouds, I've only been able to do astrophotography 6 nights since April.

I finally had a couple of clear nights over the past week or so to finish up one more image.
This is the Heart Nebula, located 7500 light years from Earth. The nebula is lit from the ionizing radiation from the star cluster located in it's center. This star cluster is known as Melotte 15.

The image is a combination of:

150, 90 second Hydrogen Alpha Images
66, 90 second Oxygen III images
58, 90 second Sulfur II Images

For a total of 6.9 hours of imaging, the longest single image with my RASA 11 so far. This is also my first image that I used a powerful software package designed specifically for Astrophotography, called Pixinsight. It is a daunting program to learn and is very different than my normal Photoshop routine, but the final image is much cleaner, deeper and more detailed than I have ever made.

I need to upload it somewhere where you can see a larger version, this small sample takes a lot away from the real image.


Heart-Nebula by Colo CJ, on Flickr

 

[Ben Egbert]

This is gorgeous, I love your deep space images.

 

[Colorado CJ]

Thanks!

Here is a link to a larger image, it is much nicer to look at than the small image posted here.

https://scontent.fapa1-2.fna.fbcdn....=2ccc624a0c05aade9e80c7c8c52754cc&oe=5F900E20

 

[Ben Egbert]

It is indeed, thanks for the link and I encourage everyone to click on it.

 

[Kyle Jones]

Phenomenal image!

 

[AlanLichty]

Amazing level of detail and depth in this shot. Well worth visiting the link to the larger version.

 

[Amy Nelson]

This is insanely beautiful!

 

[JimFox]

Thanks!

Here is a link to a larger image, it is much nicer to look at than the small image posted here.

https://scontent.fapa1-2.fna.fbcdn....=2ccc624a0c05aade9e80c7c8c52754cc&oe=5F900E20

Hey Andy, upload it to our Astro Gallery here. You can upload much larger resolution photos in our gallery. 3000 pix wide if I recall.

You can in the future actually upload it to our Gallery here, and then link it into your thread. Alan, and a bunch of the guys here use that method.

 

[Mike Lewis]

Andrew,

This is great - such a super target. Love the colors and the depth you got with this one! You captured Melotte 15 very nicely. Would love to see this larger - of course if you are on Astrobin, you can post full size there and post the link here.

I will be interested in how you get on with Pixinsight. I think you will continue to like your results a lot, and the learning curve gets less daunting as you use it more and more often. Of course, I am well aware of the smoke challenges too, being a bit south of you. It has been pretty awful at times here, so I can only imagine what you have been coping with up there. IN any case, drop me a messge if you have any specific questions or just want to talk about the program. I am not an expert on Pixinsight myself, but I have been using it as my primary processing software now for a number of years so I have developed a few abilities when using it I guess.

ML

 

[Jameel Hyder]

Stunning!! Great detail in this.

 

[JimFox]

Awesome photo by the way!

I really love the detail, and appreciate the depth you have captured here with this. A small detail, but even the stars look great.

Pixinsight is indeed daunting to use. I have put off trying it because just looking at it has made my head ache... I know I will need to use it some day, maybe you can write up a short basic tutorial on the steps to using it. Especially for a beginner, someone like me who maybe isn't using a dedicated astro camera?

 

[Jim Dockery]

Wunderbar!

 

[escilla]

Absolutely nice image. Incredible level of detail.

Fine Job.

Regards

 

[Dale Berlin]

Super shot CJ just stunning. As you know those photons traveled for 7500 years just to create this image.