Category: Deep Sky

IC410 is a dusty emission nebula located in the constellation of Auriga at about 12.000 ly from Earth. It is part of a larger star forming region that also contains the Flaming Star Nebula. The gas structures in this picture are lit by the radiation from the open star cluster NGC1893 that lies in the center of the nebula. This star cluster is about 4 million years old, but in astronomical terms it is still very young, with hot, massive stars. At the top-left of the star cluster two more dense structures are visible. These are similar to the famous Pillar of Creation and they are composed of dust and gas leftover from the formation of the star cluster and are very likely to give birth to more stars in the future. As can be seen in the picture, these structures point away from the center of the nebula. This is because of the stellar winds and radiation pressure from the stars in NGC 1893. Due to these structure’s shape, the nebula is also called the Tadpoles Nebula.

I’ve reworked this image a bit. I watched a video and got some ideas. I split the three channels out and processed each individually before recombining. The capture was with an L-eNhance filter that lets in Ha, OIII, and Hb. The Ha is red of course, the OIII is kind of green and Hb is kind of blue so I pretended it was a clear cut split for the three colors and frequencies. Anyway, once split I did one automatic levels stretch on each and one manual curves on each. Then on green and blue I did a brightness/contrast layer (two for the blue I think) to try to get them close to the contrast level seen in the red without the extra work. Then recombine, crop, and dust enhance and star size reduction actions. Although the colors are not “real”, I like the results.

I decided to spend Thanksgiving evening at the River Ridge Observatory shooting the North American Nebula (NGC 7000). I shot this nebula a few months ago but I decided to do so again to see what I’ve learned since then. The Moon was near full but I used my Optolong L-eNhance filter to restrict wavelengths to Hydrogen Alpha and Oxygen III. I used my C11 with Hyperstar, it was auto-guided and this image was made from 12 5-minute subs with flats and darks applied. All post processing was done in Photoshop. I was a little aggressive in processing to bring out the details in the center, but the reddish hue at top and bottom volunteered itself.