Here is another collaboration with
Fred Hermann down in Alabama. Fred's quote: Since the weather this year hasn’t been the greatest and the clear nights are few in number it really makes sense to join together.
This is the Medusa Planetary Nebula. It’s in the constellation Gemini and is about 1500 light years distant. It’s very old, very large and very dim (magnitude 16). The Medusa is roughly 12,000,000 times dimmer than the brightest star of the evening sky (Sirius at magnitude -1.4).
This is the HST (Hubble Space Telescope) version
18x30 mins ea bin 1x1 H-Alpha
18x30, 12x20 mins ea bin 1x1 OIII
6x30, 12x20 mins ea bin 1x1 SII
Total Exposure time 27.5 Hours
Imaged over about 12 nights from Huntsville Alabama and Fremont Michigan using Astro Tech 12" Ritchey-Chrétien astrographs, Fred used a QSI 683 Mono CCD while I used the QHY9M Mono CCD (both having the same KAF8300 chip)
Planetary Nebulas are star remnants of stars similar in size to our own Sun. At the end of a medium star’s life it turns into a red giant and expels most of its material in the form of an expanding shell rich in carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and calcium. The radiation from the core remnant ionizes these materials and causes the shell to radiate.
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