I present my version of the of the Helix Nebula. It’s also known as NGC 7293 and the “Eye of God”. It’s a planetary nebula in which the center star has been dying for around 10,600 years. In these planetary nebulae the outer layers are shed off and drift off the surface of the star’s core and the nebula is lit by the central star’s core. The central star becomes a white dwarf. Our Sun will die that way in about 5-10 billion years. Every planetary nebula is different, so that makes my hobby fun. This is the closest planetary nebula to earth at around 655 light years away. This was actually shot in the summer. It took me several months of fiddling with it to get the color I liked. I only shot Hydrogen and Oxygen, so it’s bicolor but with some fiddling I got the color seen here. I used to have a more various color (bottom image), like a rainbow, but then I added more exposure. I could never get that color back with this data. I liked it better, but with more data I got more detail in the image. It’s actually a 3D bubble but it’s thin so we can see through the gasses between us and the center white dwarf.
For those that are interested here is the processed Ha channel of the data combined above.
And here is the OIII channel for those that are interested. This was also processed.
Here is the original I wanted the colors to be like. This came from while I was imaging and had to stop for the night I stacked it to see how it’s coming along. I processed it and everything before I actually got more exposure. There’s so many settings in image processing software Pixinsight and the tiniest thing can change the outcome.
Here is the capture details of the image at the top and the Ha and OIII channel images.
Camera: ZWO 294MM Pro
Mount: EQ6R Pro
Telescope: Astrotech 115 EDT
Field flattener: Hotech Flattener
Guided with Astromania 60mm guide scope
Guide camera: ZWO Asi 120mm-s
Gain: 120
Offset: 30
Sensor Temperature: -10C
Ha Frames: 89 @ 300s
OIII Frames: 62 @ 300s
Integration time : about 12.5 hours
Flats: 50/filter
Dark Flats: 50/filter
Darks: 50/filter
Captured by NINA
Polar aligned by SharpCap
Stacked and processed by Pixinsight