With moral support from Geoff Smith, we've doubled the total exposure on the Trifid, with a view to better seeing the Herbig-Haro jet and the evaporative gaseous globule next to it.
20 inch PlaneWave. Red = SII, Green = H-alpha, Blue = OIII. 34 half-hour subs total, 17 with an FLI PL16803 from the other day, and 17 with an Aspen GC16M (same chip) from 4 years ago.
With North on the right, the Trifid becomes the face of an angry tom-cat, that has been in a fight. The cat's right ear (our left, and bent toward the nose because of the fight - see close-up) has a very conspicuous Herbig-Haro jet (like a yellow-green thorn, heading off toward 2 o'clock from the ear). The jet is about 16 sec arc long and less than 1.5 sec arc wide. Just below it is a thin dark nick, a column of dust in the core of the the evaporative gaseous globule, the two features reminiscent of a snail's antennae.
To the right of the cat's head is a large blue reflection nebula, which has fought its way through the OIII filter. In real life it would be much brighter.
The Trifid is hugely brighter than its surroundings. There is some interesting nebulosity about, which we've brought out by selectively masking the bright central region and brightening the countryside.
Notice the bright double star on Tom's nose. Close inspection shows it is quadruple, there being two faint companions. But if we look at the raw stack, before stretching (see attached thumbnail of just these 4 stars, with Ha mapped to red and OIII to aqua), one of the two bright stars itself resolves into a double (about 3 sec arc) of strongly differing colours.
Great resolution M&T! I've even come around to appreciating green! I guess my aesthetic is evolving? As a matter of fact, in SHO images, I think green is a must and certainly so if you want to appreciate the science! A few SHO images here lately have had no green whatsoever.
Great resolution M&T! I've even come around to appreciating green! I guess my aesthetic is evolving? As a matter of fact, in SHO images, I think green is a must and certainly so if you want to appreciate the science! A few SHO images here lately have had no green whatsoever.
Amazing work in peering into the depths of details lurking within our well known Trifid. With such detail who knows, next we will be hunting for exoplanets
Amazing work in peering into the depths of details lurking within our well known Trifid. With such detail who knows, next we will be hunting for exoplanets
Thanks Rodney. Actually the other day I thought I saw a Dalek, but it turned out to be a trick of the light.
Love the highres mate. The details are excellent and the color nuances superb and meaningful as good NB should.
You must have got the rig dialed up to 11 because those stars are so tiny right to the edges. That's scary.
I'd say there would be a multitude of background galaxies visible in that field in RGB given the image scale and the sharpness.
All cool to look at guys I always enjoy your take on things, the joy in revealing features and savouring all the effort you have put in, looking for intriguing bits, is obvious, love it the snails ears are always cool to see
Love the highres mate. The details are excellent and the color nuances superb and meaningful as good NB should.
You must have got the rig dialed up to 11 because those stars are so tiny right to the edges. That's scary.
I'd say there would be a multitude of background galaxies visible in that field in RGB given the image scale and the sharpness.
Thanks Marc. We must try RGB to get a better look at the reflection nebula.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SimmoW
Wow, insanely sharp and detailed team!! Excellent work
Thanks Simon!
Quote:
Originally Posted by strongmanmike
All cool to look at guys I always enjoy your take on things, the joy in revealing features and savouring all the effort you have put in, looking for intriguing bits, is obvious, love it the snails ears are always cool to see
Mike
Thanks Mike . We chose the Trifid because it was perfectly positioned for an all-night run, and Geoff and Leigh were here. We're starting to become more and more interested in galaxies in natural colour (and H-alpha), but there was too much moon about for that. The Trifid does show a lot of astronomy all in one image.
Lovely work guys! Great, well-defined detail. The colour isn't my cup of tea, but I don't think I've ever seen a pure/majority NB image of the trifid whose colour I actually like so that's not really much of a criticism.
Lovely work guys! Great, well-defined detail. The colour isn't my cup of tea, but I don't think I've ever seen a pure/majority NB image of the trifid whose colour I actually like so that's not really much of a criticism.
Yeah, we can see that we're swimming against the rip here with the SHO. But it is interesting to see that there isn't much SII about, so this area is relatively new and doesn't have a violent past. You can't tell that admittedly negative piece of information in natural colour.