M16 (NGC 6611) Eagle Nebula, or Star Queen Nebula, was discovered in 1745 by the Swiss astronome Jean-Philippe de Cheseaux while in 1745 and 1746, De Chéseaux compiled a list of 21 nebulous objects, of which he had originally discovered 8 objects: IC 4665, NGC 6633, M16, M25, M35 (this one might have seen before by John Bevis in England), M71, M4, and M17. Moreover, he independently re-discovered M6, NGC 6231 and M22 (No. 17).
De Chéseaux sent this list to his grandfather, Reaumur, in Paris, and it was read by Reaumur at a meeting of the French Academy of Sciences on August 6, 1746 and mentioned by Jean Maraldi in 1746 (Maraldi 1751), by Le Gentil in 1759 (Le Gentil 1765), but then stayed unpublished and more or less forgotten until Guillaume Bigourdan recovered and published it within a larger paper in 1884 (Bigourdan 1892).
M16 was independently rediscovered, and nebula IC 4703 discovered, by Charles Messier on June 3, 1764.
This nebula lies in the Sagittarius Arm of the Milky Way and became famous as the “Pillars of Creation” imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope.
The nebula contains several active star-forming gas and dust regions, and is part of a diffuse emission nebula H II region, which is catalogued as IC 4703.
This region of active current star formation is about 5700 light-years distant.
According to NASA, ESA, and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA) [ https://esahubble.org/images/heic0506b/ ] among peculiarities there’s the 90 trillion kilometers long spire of gas that can be seen coming off the nebula in the northeastern part appearing like a winged fairy-tale creature poised on a pedestal, this object is actually a billowing tower of cold gas and dust rising from a stellar nursery called the Eagle Nebula.
The name “Pillars of Creation” explains the gas and dust disposed in pillars clouds which are in the process of creating new stars, while also being eroded by the light from nearby stars that have recently formed, and it was given after the Hubble picture taken on April 1, 1995.
Astronomers responsible for the photo were Jeff Hester and Paul Scowen from Arizona State University.
According to DeVorkin and Smith, 2015 [Devorkin, David H.; Smith, Robert W., 2015 “The Hubble Cosmos: 25 Years of New Vistas in Space.” National Geographic Society: 67 this name is based on a phrase used by Charles Spurgeon in his 1857 sermon “The Condescension of Christ”: by calling the Hubble’s spectacular image of the Eagle Nebula the Pillars of Creation, NASA scientists were tapping a rich symbolic tradition with centuries of meaning, bringing it into the modern age.
As much as we associate pillars with the classical temples of Greece and Rome, the concept of the pillars of creation – the very foundations that hold up the world and all that is in it – reverberates significantly in the Christian tradition. When William Jennings Bryan published The World’s Famous Orations in 1906, he included an 1857 sermon by London pastor Charles Haddon Spurgeon titled “The Condescension of Christ”. In it, Spurgeon uses the phrase to convey not only the physical world but also the force that keeps it all together, emanating from the divine: “And now wonder, ye angels,” Spurgeon says of the birth of Christ, “the Infinite has become an infant; he, upon whose shoulders the universe doth hang, hangs at his mother’s breast; He who created all things, and bears up the pillars of creation, hath now become so weak, that He must be carried by a woman!”
According to Bally et. Al., the pillars are composed of cool molecular hydrogen and dust that are being eroded by photoevaporation from the ultraviolet light of relatively close and hot stars. The leftmost pillar is about four light years in length. The finger-like protrusions at the top of the clouds are larger than the Solar System, and are made visible by the shadows of evaporating gaseous globules (EGGs), which shield the gas behind them from intense UV flux.[10] EGGs are themselves incubators of new stars.
The stars then emerge from the EGGs, which then are evaporated.
Cfr.: Bally, J.; Morse, J.; Reipurth, B. (1996). “The Birth of Stars: Herbig-Haro Jets, Accretion and Proto-Planetary Disks”. In Benvenuti, Piero; Macchetto, F.D.; Schreier, Ethan J. (eds.). Science with the Hubble Space Telescope – II. Proceedings of a workshop held in Paris, France, December 4–8, 1995. Space Telescope Science Institute. https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1996swhs.conf..491B/abstract [18/07/2023]
Sh2-129 emission nebula presents an irregular ring-arch form which resemble a figure of a flying bat, and according to Blitz et.Al. is situated at a distance of about 400 parsec or 1300 light-years.
According to Dobashi and collegues the region sourroundig Sh-129 is particularly rich of molecular clouds, first among all the whide obscure nebulositys system occulting the Milky Way in the direction of Cefeus; cfr. Dobahashi K. et Al., 1994 “Molecular Clouds in Cygnus. I. A Large-Scale 13CO Survey” – https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1994ApJS…95..419D/abstract
George Helou and collegues [ https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1988iras….7…..H/abstract ] studied the infrared radiation source IRAS 21168+5948 which coordinates coincide with the CO emission region, as just introduced within Avedisova Star Formation regions Catalogue; cfr. Avedisova V. S., 2002 “A Catalog of Star-Forming Regions in the Galaxy” in Astronomy Reports, vol.46 n.3: 193 – 205.
Within Sh2-129 center, recording in Oiii narrowband, is possible to enhance the vision of Ou4 nebula, whose form gave the name of squid nebula.
Discovered in 2011 by French astro-imager Nicolas Outters, the Squid Nebula’s alluring bipolar shape is distinguished by the telltale blue-green emission from doubly ionized oxygen atoms. Though apparently completely surrounded by hydrogen emission region Sh2-129, the true distance and nature of the Ou4 have been difficult to determine.
Recent investigation suggests Ou4 really does lie within Sh2-129 some 2,300 light-years away. Consistent with that scenario, Ou4 would represent a spectacular outflow driven by HR8119, a triple system of hot, massive stars seen near the center of the nebula.
The truly giant Squid Nebula would physically be nearly 50 light-years across.
This work is the result of personal SHO records using William Optics Redcat 51 and ASI1600mm Pro under Bortle 6 sky in Livorno – Italy (home balcony) with integration of records focused about Oiii signal obtained by Takahashi FSQ-106EDX4 and Proline FLI PL16083 camera retrieved from Telescopelive.
Data framelists set available:
here for WO51,
and here for Takahashi106
PixInSight cored workflow for generate 2 distinguished single channel SHO masters, linear-fit by Takahashi Oiii master, each pair blended by pixelmath within final S H and O masters, channel-combined in the SHO integration.
Normal narrowband workflow post-proccessing followed ‘till reaching an SHO starless
and SHO stars separated masters.
The same workflows I took for RGB channels, with the focus on star – separated from starless final integration to be used for final image composing.
I then integrated in Photoshop by screen blending mode after necessary fixing and adjustements.
Parallely, the same workflow I made for Oiii master, using Oiii starless for enhancing Ou4 structure, luminosity and tones, in Photoshop by adjustements and colorizing filtered layer.
Integration of Oiii starless channel within SHO master enhanced luminosity, saturation and structure of Ou4 whole nebula.
Spiral galaxy in the northern constellation of Canes Venatici belonging to M51 Group located to the southeast of the M101 Group and the NGC 5866 Group. The distances to these three groups are similar, thus the M51 Group, the M101 Group, and the NGC 5866 Group are actually considered as part of a large, loose, elongated structure; cfr.: https://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/9910501.
In the mid-19th century, Anglo-Irish astronomer Lord Rosse identified spiral structures within the galaxy, making this one of the first galaxies in which such structure was identified.
According to Ann, Ha et Al., 2015 [cfr.: https://arxiv.org/abs/1502.03545] catalogation of visual classified galaxies in local Universe the shape or morphology of this galaxy has a classification of SAbc where SA indicating a spiral form with no central bar feature, and bc describes a moderate to loosely wound arms, as evinced from a visible light observation with general lack of large-scale continuous spiral structure, thus M63 is considered a flocculent galaxy.
According to Thornley, 1996, when observed in the near infrared, a symmetric, two-arm structure is seen and each arm wraps 150° around the galaxy and extends out to 13,000 light-years (4,000 parsecs) from the nucleus; cfr. https://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/9607041.
According to Graham, 2008, the existence of a supermassive black hole (SMBH) at the nucleus is uncertain. If it’s true then its mass could be estimated as (8.5±1.9)×108 M☉, in few words around 850 million times the mass of our star the Sun; cfr.: https://arxiv.org/abs/0807.2549
Tully, Courtois and Sorce researches focused on galaxy distances measured M63 at 29.300.000 light years, alias 8.99 megaparsec. Cfr.: https://arxiv.org/abs/1605.01765
In this work I use bundle observation from Telescopelive Spain 2 CCD Officina Stellare 700mm RC.
First, by PixInSight, Cosmetic Correction was required to better recalibrate subframes, especially removing vertical couple of lines. Then the same registration, integration, bg removing, spcc, deconvolution and denoising routine to generate LRGB masterframe, while in parallel, working on Luminance master for final Photoshop image reconstruction, with starless and stars levels blending – respectively in luminosity (L) and screen (Stars) mode.
The obscuration of background objects by intervening dust towards the Galactic centre – Extinction – is generally very high, thus detailed studies of the central regions of our Galaxy are difficult.
There are small patches of sky along the line of sight to the Galactic centre that, by chance, suffer less extinction, and one of the largest and most famous of these is Baade’s Window which provides a relatively unobscured view of a region 4 degrees (~2,000 light years) south of the Galactic centre, with centre approximately located by NGC6522 star cluster.
Most of our knowledge of the stars in the bulge of the Milky Way is derived from studies in Baade’s Window.
It is named for astronomer Walter Baade, who first recognized its significance.
This area corresponds to one of the brightest visible patches of the Milky Way.
It is centered at a galactic longitude (l) of 1.02° and a galactic latitude (b) of -3.92°,[1] which corresponds to a right ascension of 18h 03m 32.14s and a declination of -30d 02m 06.96s, in the direction of the constellation Sagittarius.
According to Barbuy et Al. 2009, NGC6522 is possibly the oldest star cluster in the Milky Way, and Chiappini et Al., 2011 evaluated its age of about 12 billion years; cfr. “VLT-FLAMES Analysis of 8 giants in the Bulge Metal-poor Globular Cluster NGC 6522: Oldest Cluster in the Galaxy?” by B. Barbuy et al., 2009 [https://arxiv.org/abs/0908.3603] , and “Imprints of fast-rotating massive stars in the Galactic Bulge” by Cristina Chiappini et al., Nature 472, pp. 454–457 (28 April 2011) [https://www.nature.com/articles/nature10000]
NGC 6528 is located southwest of NGC 6522 and also presents unusually metal-richness for a globular cluster. A very similar composition with NGC 6553 suggests an origin in a similar environment; cfr.: “Chemical analysis of NGC 6528: one of the most metal-rich bulge globular cluster” by Muñoz, C.et Al., 2018 [https://arxiv.org/abs/1809.04164]
In this work I separately processed LRGB integration and L masterframe by PixInSight: after normal routine (bg removing, Spectrophotometric CC, Deconvolution and denoising) I thus preferred to separate LRGB stars from starless data, thus to proceed to the final image recomposition in Photoshop with 3 main levels group (and relative fixing and adjustments) with starless on the bottom, stars blending in screen mode, and luminance as top layer blending in luminosity.
NGC 5367, also catalogued as IC 4347, a Reflection Nebula in Centaurus, lighted from two bluish components of the binary system h4636 from spectral type B4 and B7.
Nebula is associated with the cometary globule CG12, extending from bottom center to the upper right for more than 1°: dicovered in 1976 on an ESO/SRC Sky Survey plate taken with the UK Schmidt telescope, CG12 is in contrast to the most other Cometary Globules, because it is far away from the galactic disk by latitude as more than 21°.
A strong IRAS point source and a highly collimated outflow indicate that star formation is still going on. The head of the globule has been observed using NIR imaging (NTT sofi), mm continuum (SEST Simba) and sub mm (APEX) and mm (SEST) spectroscopy.
The molecular material is distributed in a 10′ North-South elongated lane with two compact maxima separated by 3′. Strong C^18O (3-2), (2-1) and (1-0) emission is detected in both maxima and both have an associated compact 1.2 mm continuum source.
The Northern core, CG 12 N, is cold and is possibly still pre-stellar. A stellar source with a NIR reflection nebulosity is observed near CG 12 N.
The observed C^18O line ratios are similar to those observed in Class 0 sources.
A remarkable C^18O (3-2) hot spot is detected in the direction of the Southern core, CG 12 S. It lies at the edge of a dense cloud core detected both in high density tracers (CS (3-2), H^13CO^+ (1-0) and DCO^+(2-1)) and in the 1.2 mm continuum.
The hot spot also lies on the axis of a highly collimated bipolar molecular outflow with a driving source most probably embedded in the dense core. This is the first detection of such a compact, warm object in a low mass star forming region.
NIR imaging reveals a bright cone-like feature with a faint counter cone in the centre of CG 12 S. The total mass (> 100 M[sun]) and the linear size of the CG 12 head (~3 pc) are similar to those of other nearby low mass star forming regions.
Even though the most evolved stars in CG 12 lie already on ZAMS the cloud contains also proto-stellar sources and a pre-stellar core.
I found this work not so easy to be done, but I really stoked into. Mostly made in PixInSight I played and LRGB and HOO separated integration, background removing, Spectrophotometric color calibration. I then used Ha to enhace both L and R channel, while Oiii to integrate G and B channel. Extracting starless / stars masters, then is adding stars from LRGB color calibrated master into HaL HaR OiiiG OiiiB nebula master. This is a very interesting subject. The central star in this image is WR 40 which is located toward the constellation of Carina. WR stands for Wolf Rayet, in honor of French astronomers Charles Wolf and Georges Rayet. This Wolf Rayet star is thus about 100 times as massive as our, lives fast and dies young. It is going quickly to exhaust its core hydrogen supply, moves on to fusing heavier core elements, and expands while ejecting it outer layers via high stellar winds at a speed of nearly 100 kilometers per second, and these outer layers have become the expanding oval-shaped nebula RCW 58. Cfr. https://science.nasa.gov/stellar-wind-shaped-nebula-rcw-58
Telescope CH-1-CMOS Planewave CDK24
Camera QHY 600M
Location: El Sauce Observatory, Chile
Date of observation 27/04/2023
Filters L R G B H O
Processing in PixInSight, Photoshop CreditsCredits: Telescoplive
An attempt of astronomic photography postproduction using Gimp, made easy by excellent data quality retrieved from SPA-1-CCD Telescopelive network focused about NGC1333 and IC348.
Previous PixInSight processing made, generating an LRGB deconvoluted, denoised, starless/stars pre-elaboration, starless + 0,75% stars pixelmath integration before .tiff exporting and Gimp postprocessing.
