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

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