Celestial Equestrian: A Triband Glimpse into the Heart of the Horsehead NebulaFive years ago, I stood under the expansive night sky, a Vixen ED115S telescope, generously provided by a friend's university, in my hands. As I peered through its lens at the Horsehead Nebula, I was utterly captivated by its stellar beauty and the telescope's extraordinary precision. Now, fast forward to today, I am at Al Sadeem Observatory in the UAE, enriched with knowledge and experience. With the same model of telescope before me, I adjust its focus with a seasoned hand. Gazing once again at the familiar nebula, I'm struck by a sense of personal evolution. The stars and nebula, eternal in their cosmic ballet, are unchanged, but I view them through a new lens of understanding. It's a poignant testament to my journey in astronomy: the same celestial wonders, the same instrument, yet a profoundly different perspective.
Photometric colour analysis:
The histograms for each channel show the distribution of pixel values, and the dashed lines indicate the mean value of the central region of each channel, which we're using as an estimate for the background level. The noise, estimated as the standard deviation of the background, gives an idea of the variation in pixel values where no significant astronomical features are present.
Here are the estimated noise levels for each channel:
- Red Channel: Mean ~ 170.58, Noise (Std. Dev.) ~ 56.22
- Green Channel: Mean ~ 61.76, Noise (Std. Dev.) ~ 20.92
- Blue Channel: Mean ~ 69.77, Noise (Std. Dev.) ~ 20.05
The red channel shows a higher mean and noise level, which may be due to the fact that the nebula emits strongly at the red part of the spectrum, or the image processing that has highlighted this channel.
The Sobel filter has been applied to the grayscale image of the nebula NGC 2023 to detect the edges. The result is a visualization that emphasizes the boundaries and structures within the nebula. The edges highlighted by the Sobel filter often correspond to areas of rapid intensity change in the image, which could denote the outer limits of the nebula's clouds or areas where different materials or densities come into contact.Data acquired by Mohamed Usama Ismail aka
URSAMO https://www.instagram.com/ursamo_astrophotography/Head Operator at
Al Sadeem Observatory UAE https://alsadeemastronomy.ae/ <Check out our amazing team here
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