Dazzling clarity and beautifully captured stars stand out in Ron Brecher’s picture of IC 5068, our Photo of the Week for October 22, 2021.
IC 5068 is an emission nebula in Cygnus. Brecher writes that like the other patches of glowing gas in this region, this nebula lies around 1,600 light-years away, and glows in red wavelengths due to emissions from hydrogen atoms. Brecher also notes that there are several other objects in the field that are identified in an annotated image he has posted on his website.
Brecher used a four-inch refractor to capture the relatively low resolution one-shot colour data, and a larger telescope six-inch refractor and monochrome camera to collect higher resolution luminance.
Shooting from Guelph, Ontario, August 12 to September 30, 2021, the total integration time was 32 hours and 15 minutes.
Our honourable mention this week goes to Jason Schella for his nicely-processed image of NGC 7635, the Bubble Nebula.
The Bubble Nebula is an emission nebula located about 7,100 light-years away from our Solar System. The nebula encases the star BD+602522, which burns a million times brighter than our Sun and produces powerful stellar winds that move at more than six million kilometres per hour. Its powerful outflows formed the nebula.
Shooting from his Bortle 6/7 backyard in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in September 2021, Schella used a Celestron EdgeHD 800, iOptron CEM120 mount, ZWO ASI1600MM Pro camera. He shot in narrowband SHO, processed in the Hubble palette.
“Each filter is six hours of integration time, made up of 72 five-minute exposures each,” he wrote.
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