Celestial hemisphere:  Southern  ·  Constellation: Centaurus (Cen)  ·  Contains:  NGC 5139  ·  Omega Centauri  ·  omega Cen
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Omega Centauri in narrowband: Ha and Oiii, Freestar8n

Omega Centauri in narrowband: Ha and Oiii

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
Omega Centauri in narrowband: Ha and Oiii, Freestar8n

Omega Centauri in narrowband: Ha and Oiii

Equipment

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Acquisition details

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Description

This was an experiment to see how well star populations can show when imaging a globular with two narrowband filters: Ha and Oiii. The result is a happy surprise - the bright orangish stars are main sequence - and sprinkled in the background are blue stars all of about the same brightness - and they are horizontal branch. Meanwhile there are a few faint red stars and some bright blue ones also. I believe they are unrelated foreground (red) and background (blue) stars.

The seeing was good on these two nights, with fwhm's down to 1.2" in 5m exposures. The good seeing combined with a full moon motivated me to try this.

The image has had no smoothing, sharpening or cropping. The only processing involved was to map the two color channels to RGB in Maxim, then stretch the colors in PS. Only global operations were performed.

EdgeHD11 at f/10 with ASI1600MMPro. 40x5m exposures in each filter. Video-guided with MetaGuide and corrections every second with CGX-L mount. Calibrated and stacked in custom software.

Autofocused with custom software using a stepper on the primary mirror focus knob, with refocus every 40 minutes. Dithered every exposure. Two imaging sessions on successive nights with 100% yield and all exposures stacked.

Comments

Revisions

  • Omega Centauri in narrowband: Ha and Oiii, Freestar8n
    Original
  • Final
    Omega Centauri in narrowband: Ha and Oiii, Freestar8n
    B

Sky plot

Sky plot

Histogram

Omega Centauri in narrowband: Ha and Oiii, Freestar8n