IR vs RGB Images of Soul Nebula (David McClain)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Cassiopeia (Cas) · Contains: IC 1848 · IC 1871

IR vs RGB Images of Soul Nebula, David McClain

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IR vs RGB Images of Soul Nebula

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IR vs RGB Images of Soul Nebula

Left is image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, with colors R = 24 microns, G = 8 microns, and B = 3.6 microns.

Right is RGB+HaLum image, raw frames courtesy of Deep Sky West Remote Observatory in New Mexico, USA. (deepskywest.com) Data obtained with FSQ 106EDXiii / QSI683wsg / Lodestar / Paramount MyT.

21 hrs total integration (16x900s R, 16x900s G, 16x900s B, and 18x1800s H-alpha). The palette is RGB with H-alpha serving as Luminance.

Images were geometrically scaled and rotated to present the same view.

It is very interesting to see that dark cloud in the lower left region in the RGB image, presents as a bright infrared object between 8-24 microns, which corresponds to a mean temperature of around 300K. And this is definite confirmation that it is indeed a dark cloud in the RGB image, and not a "hole" in the star field.

The same thing holds for the upper left region, which looks like the edge of the nebula in the RGB image, but the IR image confirms a massive dark cloud.

... and both images confirm that the eye-sockets are indeed holes in the nebula.

And, having come from IR Astronomy, I find it interesting to compare the star fields. They appear very different in the mid-IR than at visual wavelengths. Many of the bright visible stars barely register in the mid-IR regime. And conversely, many of the brighter IR stars show up as faint, ruddy, late-type visible stars.

In the "old days", IR Astronomy was never this exciting. The best we could do was to map out regions with a 1-pixel detector, called a bolometer. Most of our time was spent just doing photometry on individual target objects. Having images like the Spitzer image was a pipe dream.

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Distribution of astrophotographers

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	Distinct awarded users	Total awarded images
Image of the day
Top picks
Top pick nominations

Distribution of subject types

This table shows the distribution of awards per subject type, compared to the popularity of images of that subject type.
	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Deep sky
Solar system
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Star trails
Northern lights
Noctilucent clouds
Landscape

Distribution of data sources

This table shows the distribution of awards per data source, compared to the popularity of images acquired from that data source.
	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Backyard
Traveller
Own remote observatory
Amateur hosting facility
Public amaeteur data
Professional, scientific grade data
Mix of multiple sources
Other
Unknown

The “AstroBin Image of the Day and Top Picks”, or IOTD/TP, is a long-running system to promote beautiful, interesting, peculiar, or otherwise amazing astrophotographs, with a focus on technical excellence. Learn more.

Submitted The date and time when you submitted this image for IOTD/TP consideration.	...
Views by Submitters (available since September 19th, 2023) Every image is assigned to 50% of available Submitters. In the event that at least 80% of them don't view the image before its time in the IOTD/TP process expires, it's assigned to the other 50% of Submitters and the process begins anew.
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Promotions by Reviewers When 3 distinct Reviewers promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for IOTD status.
Early dismissal Staff members have a lot of images to inspect on a daily basis, and they can dismiss images if they believe they don't meet the requirements for IOTD/TP selection. If an image is dismissed 5 times, it's removed from the process. This streamlines the process and ensures that any bias present in promotions could be overruled by other staff members.

Status	Basic success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	1362969
PixInsight job	n/a
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IR vs RGB Images of Soul Nebula

IR vs RGB Images of Soul Nebula

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IR vs RGB Images of Soul Nebula

IR vs RGB Images of Soul Nebula

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