Hi everyone,
Located 655 lightyears away in Aquarius is the famous Helix nebula. The Helix nebula is one of the most extensively studied and imaged planetary nebula, and has a number of very interesting structures, including small central cometary knots, large-scale emission arcs, and a bipolar outflow causing bow-shaped filaments and shocks.
When planning this project, I came across a paper by Zhang et al discussing a possible halo around the Helix nebula. On Galex UV images, they detected a very faint possible NE jet, a SW bow shaped filament and a diffuse Southern Halo. I decided to take a deep image of the Helix to see if I could detect these infrequently seen features in Ha emission. I had also noticed on some images, faint OIII emission occurring around the NE and SW arc’s and wanted to see if I could clearly define this OIII emission.
https://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/...1&d=1696731123
Helix Halo features in IR and NIV from Zhang et al, The Astrophysical Journal
Data was captured with my Nikon 400mm f/2.8 including all of the nebulosity data seen here, but I did add some of the brighter stars from some data I had from my APM LZOS refractor. I used drizzle integration, and the outer faint halo was processed using continuum subtraction and carefully masked to not blow out the brighter inner ring.
https://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/...1&d=1696731123
Astrobin:
https://www.astrobin.com/h8hnt0/0/
Cheers,
Mat
Technical
Nikkor AF-S 400mm f/2.8E FL ED VR
ZWO ASI6200MM Pro
10Micron GM1000 HPS
Chroma Filters
Location: Dunedin NZ
Integration: 84h 30′