Capturing an unusual target with interesting detail and a nice composition, Chris Parfett’s image of vdB 152 wins the Photo of the Week title on September 10, 2021.
vdB 152 — also known as Barnard 175 — is a reflection nebula atop of the dark Bok globule B175.
The nebula on the left hosts the Herbig Haro object HH 450, a jet emitted from a newly forming star. The thin, red filaments streaming from the top-centre of the image are the remnants of a supernova explosion.
At the bottom right is Dengel-Hartl 5, a Hydrogen II and Oxygen III region, ionized by the white dwarf WD 2218+706 (the blue star in the centre of the nebula).
Parfett noted that the object is located 1,400 light-years away in the constellation Cepheus.
“Near the edge of a large molecular cloud, interstellar dust in the region blocks most of the starlight behind it or scatter light from the embedded bright star, giving parts of the nebula a characteristic blue colour,” Parfett wrote.
Parfett noted the image is a composition using Hydrogen-alpha and LRGB data. He used a William Optics GT 102 (f/6.9) with a ZWO ASI294MM and a ZWO ASI294MC Pro; the RGB portion was shot with the one-shot colour camera. Shooting from Bittern Lake, Alberta, he collected 17.8 hours of data between August 18 and September 3, 8.5 hours of which was Ha data.
Our runner up this week is Andrew Lesser’s image of NGC 6888, the Crescent Nebula.
Also known as Caldwell 27, the nebula lies about about 4,700 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus. With a magnitude of 8.8, the Crescent Nebula is not visible to the naked eye.
“Located in the constellation Cygnus, the ‘brain’ nebula is an impressive explosion of stellar winds shed from the central star Wolf-Rayet, signalling the changing phases of its life,” Lesser wrote.
Lesser used a William Optics GT102 and a ZWO ASI2600MM Pro to capture an astounding 34 hours and 5 minutes of data from Calgary, Alberta.
“This was captured across 10 nights between June and August, with only a single night in July limited by the blanketing smoke from wild fires across the region,” Lesser wrote. “Tried a play on the traditional SHO palette to show something a bit different. Blended in true colour RGB stars for good measure.”
