Category

Low Light Photography

Location

Dartford, UK

Gear

ZWO ASI294MM cooled monochrome camera with Ha, Oiii, Sii narrowband filters, Skywatcher 150PDS telescope on HEQ5 tracking mount.

Description

The image is of the Rosette Nebula (classified as NGC 2237) which is a vast emission nebula located some 5,000 light years away, and spans about 100 light years across. At its centre is a stellar nursery where new stars are born and are emitting streams of charged particles known as stellar winds. These winds carve out the gas and dust at the centre of the nebula earning the cosmic cloud its Rosette name. The image was captured over four nights from my back garden in Dartford and is a two panel mosaic (being too large to fit my field of view). Over 10 hours of 5 minute exposures were taken through narrowband Hydrogen Alpha, Oxygen III and Sulphur II filters using a dedicated monochrome astrophotography camera cooled down to -10 deg C. The resulting image sets were stacked and combined with dark, flat and dark flat calibration frames to produce 3 integrated images one per filter corresponding to the particular emission wavelength. The images are then post-processed and assigned to RGB channels to create the final multi-colour image. Astrophotography from light polluted areas can be extremely challenging, but through techniques such as using narrowband wavelength filters combined with monochrome sensors and cooling the sensor temperature down, stunning results can be achieved. With this picture, I particularly love the colour palette combination and how it shows off the different gases to their maximum effect.

Photographer

Danny Pearce

Social Media

Instagram: dannypearceastro

Website: https://www.dannypearceastro.com/

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