WR 102: Looks Like Halloween Is Coming (Alex Woronow)

WR 102: Looks Like Halloween Is Coming

WR 102: Looks Like Halloween Is Coming

OTA: CDK 24"
Camera: Moravian 61000 pro
Observatory: Heaven's Mirror, Chile
Date of Capture:
Date of Processing:

Exposures:
R: 10 x 180 sec
G: 9 x 180
B: 8 x 180
H: 18 x 1200 sec
O: 14 x 1200 sec
Total Exposure time: 11 hours
Image Width: 30.3 arc-minutes

Posted Images (2x down-sampled):
A.   Reduced stars with plate solution (HORGB)
B.   Starless version (HORGB)
C.   Fully stared version (HORGB)
D.   RGB, full stars version

Processing Tools:
1.   Commercial: PixInsight, Topaz (Studio2, Photo AI2), Photo Director 365, Aurora HDR, Luminar Neo, 3DLUT Creator
2.   Pixinsight Addons: NoiseXTerminator, BlurXTerminator, StarXTerminator, Normalize Scale Gradient
3.   My Scripts: NB_Assistant, AC_Restar, Subframe Weighting Tool (Excel w/ J. Hunt)

Target Description:
WR 102 is not actually the name of the nebula but is the ID of the Wolf-Rayet star that generated the nebula. On this posting, if you run the cursor across the image, you will see a star labeled V5893. That is another name for WR 102.

As I've written before, Wolf-Rayet stars are young, very massive stars with a short lifetime. They eject a considerable amount of their accreted mass during that lifetime, as we see here.

Processing Description:
This is a "true color" approximation of the nebula generated from a simultaneous-equation combination of broadband and narrowband images. The star density in the base image is extensive enough to almost conceal this nebula, and, as is so often the case these days, I process a starless image and then put back a proportion of the stars.

To test technology and what would happen if one did not calibrate images taken with a top-line CMOS camera, that is the tact I took for these images. However, I did apply CosmeticCorrection to suppress most of the hot pixels in the subs.

Statistics:
Distance: 9500 ly
Apparent Magnitude: 14 (of the WR star)
Pixel Span at Target: 17 Billion km

Alex Woronow

Final
Original
B
C
D

B

Title: starles HORGB

Uploaded: ...

C

Title: Fully Starred (HORGB)

Uploaded: ...

D

Title: RGB full array of stars

Uploaded: ...

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

	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Deep sky
Solar system
Extremely wide field
Star trails
Northern lights
Noctilucent clouds
Landscape

	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

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.
Promotions by Submitters When 3 distinct Submitters promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for Top Pick status. This requirement, in addition to anonymization of images and distribution to only a subset of them, prevents biases and ensures that the best images are selected.
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	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	8532765
PixInsight job	CXIPLO7THWXH5AZITEJNWPCZL8EOYILR
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	17h45m47s.337
RA (top/left)	17h44m39s.560
RA (top/right)	17h46m55s.350
RA (bottom/right)	17h46m54s.885
RA (bottom/left)	17h44m39s.952

Dec (center)	-26°10′27″.25
Dec (top/left)	-26°20′24″.29
Dec (top/right)	-26°20′23″.92
Dec (bottom/right)	-26°00′29″.84
Dec (bottom/left)	-26°00′29″.16

Image Index:

Contribution Index (beta):