Prawn Nebula in Emission Line Color
10-Aug-2018
IC 4628, sometimes known as The Prawn Nebula, is an emission nebula located around 6000 light-years away in the constellation Scorpius
This image combines sulfur, hydrogen and oxygen emission lines mapped to red, green & blue. An emission line will appear in a spectrum if the source emits specific wavelengths of radiation. This emission occurs when an atom, element or molecule in an excited state returns to a configuration of lower energy.
For a natural color view, see here
Image:
- 39x 600s Sulfur-II
- 15x 600s Hydrogen-alpha
- 37x 600s Oxygen-III
Total integration 15 hours, 10 minutes.
Hardware:
- Skywatcher Black Diamond 80ED
- Skywatcher EQ8 Pro mount
- QSI 683-ws8 Camera @ -15°C
- Astronomik 6nm SHO filters
- Starlight Xpress Lodestar X2 Autoguider
- Innovations Foresight On Axis Guider
- Starlight Instruments Focus Boss II
Location:
- Orange zone in Brisbane, Australia. (Bortle 7)
Software:
- Planning & camera alignment with Aladin 10
- Captured with TheSkyX Professional
- Guiding with PHD2
- FocusLock live focusing
- PixInsight: calibrate, align, stack, crop, dynamic background extraction, pixelmath combine SHO, SCNR green, noise reduction, stretch, curves.