M42 - The Great Orion Nebula Imaged with T31

M42, The Great Orion Nebula, is still one of my favorite deep-sky objects to image and visually observe. I recall seeing the nebula for the first time through my Sears and Roebuck 3" refracting telescope in the winter of 1979. I have to admit, it was a little disappointing how it looked as it didn't nearly compare to the pictures that were published in "Sky and Telescope" and "Astronomy" magazines at the time. However, it was still a bit exciting seeing the "fuzziness" of the object along with four major stars that make up the "Trapezium" in this brilliant stellar nursery. Due to the advanced technologies of remote robotic telescopes for education, capturing a detailed colored image of this fine object has become more possible. 

M42 - Imaged by Michael Petrasko and Muir Evenden

On the morning of March 16, 2014, I logged in remotely around 6:00 am EDT to T31 (hosted by iTelescope.net in New South Wales, Australia - 9:00 pm, Australia time) from my home office on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. The moon was nearly full, however, the skies were very clear according to the image of their "All-Sky Camera". Telescope 31 was available, that is Planewave 20" (0.51m) CDK imaging telescope equipped with an FLI-PL09000 CCD camera. After consulting the Stellarium software on my iMac for a good object to image that is at least close to 60 degrees away from the moon, I saw that the constellation Orion was pretty much still high enough in the sky to allow me to image M42. I simply took four images in five minutes. Each image was taken with a Luminance, Red, Green, and Blue filter on the CCD camera. My colleague and friend Muir Evenden then downloaded the raw data from the iTelescope FTP site and proceeded to stack and process the four images using the CCD processing software named PixInsight. After Muir was done with his "pre-processing", I then performed a bit more processing in Photoshop CS6. We were amazed by the results of taking four 300-second exposures and just executing some quick processing with these powerful software packages.

Some Interesting Facts about M42:

The Orion Nebula (also known as Messier 42, M42, or NGC 1976) is a diffuse nebula situated south of Orion's Belt in the constellation of Orion. It is one of the brightest nebulae and is visible to the naked eye in the night sky. M42 is located at a distance of 1,344 ± 20 light-years and is the closest region of massive star formation to Earth. The M42 nebula is estimated to be 24 light-years across. It has a mass of about 2000 times the mass of the Sun. Older texts frequently refer to the Orion Nebula as the Great Nebula in Orion or the Great Orion Nebula.

The Orion Nebula is one of the most scrutinized and photographed objects in the night sky and is among the most intensely studied celestial features. The nebula has revealed much about the process of how stars and planetary systems are formed from collapsing clouds of gas and dust. Astronomers have directly observed protoplanetary disks, brown dwarfs, intense and turbulent motions of the gas, and the photo-ionizing effects of massive nearby stars in the nebula. There are also supersonic "bullets" of gas piercing the hydrogen clouds of the Orion Nebula. Each bullet is ten times the diameter of Pluto's orbit and tipped with iron atoms glowing bright blue. They have probably formed one thousand years ago from an unknown violent event.

Read More

The Summer Milky Way Project at Blake Planetarium

W. Russell Blake Planetarium 2013

The "Summer Milky Way Project" at Blake Planetarium

At Plymouth Community Intermediate School, Ms. Shaw’s 6th-grade class took part in an exciting collaboration with the Blake Planetarium and Insight Observatory. Using grant money awarded by iTelescope.net, the students in Ms. Shaw’s class took images of objects found in the visible arm of the Milky Way. The telescopes, which are located in Australia and New Mexico, were accessed and programmed remotely through iPads at the planetarium.

Deep-Sky objects the students imaged  that are visible 
from the Northern Hemisphere

The images of nebulae and star clusters that returned were not only breathtaking but also informative, as they showed us what else lies within our galaxy. Since we do not have a picture of our entire galaxy, most of our understanding of the Milky Way comes from the clues we see in our own sky. When we look up at the stars on a clear night, we can see the band across our sky made up of densely packed stars and dark space dust created by the spiral arms of our own galaxy.

Deep-Sky objects the students imaged that are visible 
from the Southern Hemisphere

Our eyes are not sensitive enough to pick up details of objects that lie within or beyond those distant arms, but the high-powered telescopes at iTelescope.net gave us a clear view of the star nurseries, dying stars, supernova remnants, open clusters, and globular clusters that share our galaxy with us.

Read More

One Shot Color of Carina Nebula

The southern hemisphere is full of "deep-sky wonders" as much as the northern hemisphere. Having access to remote robotic telescopes in locations such as New South Wales, Australia, allows us, northern hemisphere observers, to image and research a whole new frontier. Here is an image of NGC 3372, The "Carina Nebula" captured by Michael Petrasko on the evening of April 26, 2013 (local time NSW). This image was taken with a full moon in the sky at the time. It's clearly evident that there is no "washout" from the light of the moon whatsoever.

NGC 3372 - Carina Nebula imaged by Michael Petrasko

The Carina Nebula (also known as the Great Nebula in Carina, the Eta Carina Nebula, or NGC 3372, as well as "Grand Nebula") is a large bright nebula that surrounds several open clusters of stars. Eta Carinae and HD 93129A, two of the most massive and luminous stars in our Milky Way galaxy, are among them. The nebula lies at an estimated distance between 6,500 and 10,000 light-years from Earth. It appears in the constellation of Carina and is located in the Carina–Sagittarius Arm.

The Carina Nebula is one of the largest diffuse nebulae in our skies. Although it is some four times as large and even brighter than the famous Orion Nebula, the Carina Nebula is much less well known, due to its location far in the Southern Hemisphere. It was discovered by Nicolas Louis de Lacaille in 1751–52 from the Cape of Good Hope.

The image is a 15-minute exposure taken with an SBIG ST2000XMC One-Shot Color CCD camera through a Takahashi SKY90 3" (90mm) Apochromatic Refractor (pictured left) provided by iTelescope.net. Processing was done with SBIG CCDOps software and Adobe Photoshop CS6. 3x5 images were stacked with 3 synthetic luminance images created from each color image for noise reduction.

A one-shot color CCD camera can provide interesting images (if processed properly with synthetic luminance images) just as well, if not better, than high-end monochrome CCD cameras that use Red, Green, and Blue color filters.

Read More