Celestial hemisphere:  Southern  ·  Constellation: Apus (Aps)  ·  Contains:  HD151233  ·  HD151324  ·  HD152302  ·  HD152463  ·  HD152549  ·  HD152744  ·  HD152858  ·  HD153013  ·  HD153298  ·  HD153435  ·  HD153582  ·  HD153844  ·  HD154343  ·  HD154748  ·  HD154985  ·  HD155101  ·  HD155245  ·  HD155557  ·  HD155725  ·  HD155858  ·  HD156312  ·  HD156373  ·  HD156513  ·  HD156628  ·  HD157065  ·  HD157512  ·  HD157725  ·  HD158011  ·  HD158769  ·  HD159047  ·  And 128 more.
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The South Celestial Serpent — Mandel-Wilson 9, Chris Laurel
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The South Celestial Serpent — Mandel-Wilson 9

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
The South Celestial Serpent — Mandel-Wilson 9, Chris Laurel
Powered byPixInsight

The South Celestial Serpent — Mandel-Wilson 9

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Description

The South Celestial Serpent is a rarely imaged ribbon of dust that winds almost six degrees through the south circumpolar constellation Apus. Unlike most reflection nebulae, it isn’t lit by an individual star. Rather, it floats about 100 parsecs from the galactic plane, reflecting the summed light of billions of suns in the Milky Way. Such objects were given the name Integrated Flux Nebula (IFN) by amateur astronomer Steve Mandel. They’re more familiar to professional astronomers as galactic cirrus — something I discovered when talking about the Serpent with an astrophysicist colleague.

The image is a three-panel mosaic representing 30 total hours of integration in LRGB: 10 hours per panel, and 4/2/2/2 hours for L/R/G/B. I really struggled with gradients on this object, I suppose because it’s quite faint. The gradients were manageable in the individual mosaic panels, but they reappeared after stitching the panels and I had to do some very careful DBE. The other challenge with this object is flat lighting. Since it reflects the list from a massive extended source (i.e. the entire Milky Way), you don’t get the dramatic play of light and shadow visible in images of locally lit reflection nebulae.

Comments

Revisions

    The South Celestial Serpent — Mandel-Wilson 9, Chris Laurel
    Original
    The South Celestial Serpent — Mandel-Wilson 9, Chris Laurel
    B
  • Final
    The South Celestial Serpent — Mandel-Wilson 9, Chris Laurel
    C
    The South Celestial Serpent — Mandel-Wilson 9, Chris Laurel
    D

B

Description: Small adjustments to curves

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D

Description: Better removal of gradients

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The South Celestial Serpent — Mandel-Wilson 9, Chris Laurel