Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Pegasus (Peg)  ·  Contains:  M 15  ·  NGC 7078
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Emission and dust around M15, Jon Talbot
Emission and dust around M15
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Emission and dust around M15

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
Emission and dust around M15, Jon Talbot
Emission and dust around M15
Powered byPixInsight

Emission and dust around M15

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Description

M15, the beautiful globular cluster in Pegasus shines at mag 6.2.  It's relatively easy to see with a small telescope and as a fuzzy ball with binoculars.  Messier 15 lies approximately 33,600 light years from Earth and has a diameter of about 175 light years.  M 15 is estimated to be 13.2 billion years old, making it one of the oldest known globular clusters.  M15 is also one of the most densely packed globular clusters in the Milky Way and is host to the first confirmed planetary nebula, Pease 1.  

This image also includes less well known Ha emission, in red, around M15 and molecular dust. The molecular dust is most prominent on the right side, as an arc of grayish blue material. 
Below is an image of the continuum subtracted Ha, where the starlight and continuum light has been removed showing only Ha emission and also some background galaxies which apparently strongly emit in the Ha spectrum.

My impetus to image M15 came back in Sept when Sakib Rasool asked me if I had time to image M15.  He had seen images showing there was Ha near M15.  Here on Astrobin @Martin Voigt and @Markus Blauensteiner produced two superb images showing this Ha.  I was intrigued.  So I spent 18hrs using a 5nm Ha filter and sure enough there was signal here but I wasn't sure what was emission and what wasn't.  So I spend another 6hrs shooting RGB images.   I finished up the exposures early in November and just recently I had the chance to process this data and continuum subtract the Ha image and it showed that there indeed was Ha emission here and very faint emission all over the place.  I spent another week  deciding how to best show the emission but also show M15 almost to the core.   

Luckily while I was working on the image a new PixInsight script was released, jointly developed by @Adam Block and @Mike Cranfield called NBColor Mapper.  Instead of figuring out combine ratios, this script made it extraordinarily easy to add the Ha data to a RGB image.

 So here is my version of this area.  It was not shot from a dark site but Bortle 5 area.  So,  thanks to Martrin and Markus for showing everyone what lies beneath M15 and Adam and Mike for making it easy what used to be a bit hard. 

Below is the continuum subtracted Ha image.  It's been highly stretched.  

Ha.jpg

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Emission and dust around M15, Jon Talbot