PK164+31.1 Jones Emberson 1 Planetary Nebula in [OIII], Ha and [NII] Light

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[OIII] = Red, Ha = Green, [NII] = Blue (shortest to longest wavelengths)

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[NII] = Red, Ha = Green, [OIII] = Blue  (longest to shortest wavelengths)

 

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Ha = Red, [NII] = Green, [OIII] = Blue

 

 

Taken on February 6 and 7, 2004 from my backyard in Castro Valley, Ca. under a near full moon.

 

--One of the problems created by using emission line filters is the loss of star intensity. This planetary nebula has a faint but very hot central star that emits strongly in UV. The narrow passband of the filters used do not capture much radiation from this star so the star is dimmed considerably from an RGB image. To see good examples of RGB images of this object, refer to the links below:

 

Al Kelly's Amateur image that introduced this object to me

Al Kelly's LRGB image and Richard Crisp's [NII]Ha[OIII] image data combined:

Al Kelly did the combination processing and writes:

"All processing was in AIP4WIN.

Luminance was processed from a mean stack of my unfiltered images (18 x 5 min) with your OIII, Ha, and NII images.  Processing was a merger of gamma-log stretched, non-unsharp DDPed, and histogram shaped versions, with modest background smoothing applied.  No sharpening or deconvolution applied.

Chrominance assignment was R : G : B = R+NII : G+Ha+B+OIII : B+OIII"

Arnie Rosner's Dream Machine/Mewlon 300 image

Potsdam Univ 70cm telescope

A nice history of the nebula (in German) with image in same filter set

Equipment used and exposure details:

Astro-Physics AP155EDF  imaging scope @1085mm focal length (f/7) 

SBIG ST10XME imaging camera @ -30C

Astro-Physics 80mm guide scope

SBIG ST7E Guide control camera @-10C

FLI CFW 1 filter wheel

Custom Scientific Narrowband Emission Line Filter

   [Nitrogen II]                 658.3nm  3nm FWHM

   Hydrogen alpha        656.3nm  3nm FWHM 

   [Oxygen III]                 500.7nm 3nm FWHM   

Exposure details:

7 exposures of 15 minutes for Halpha binned 2x2

7 exposures of 15 minutes for [NII]  binned 2x2

7 exposures of 15 minutes for [OIII]   binned 2x2

5 hours 15 minutes  total exposure time

Maxim DL used for ST10XME control

CCDSOFT 5.00.71 used for ST7E control

Sigma prebeta 11 used for darks, flats, biases and light combine

SGBNR used for smoothing

Photoshop CS used for final touch up

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