Stellar Shot of the Week: September 10, 2021
"WR134 in Cygnus" (by Jon Talbot)
Congratulations to this week's Stellar Shot selection, which goes to the ever-impressive Jon Talbot! This time Jon has really outdone himself though, with one of the more impressive shots we've seen this year! This was also the first time any of us here at Stellarvue had even HEARD of "WR134", much less seen such an impressive image of it!
Jon put together a fantastic description for this rare target as well, and we will let him explain exactly what you're looking at here:
"WR 134 is a Wolf-Rayet type star 6,000 light years distant in the constellation Cygnus which is surrounded by a faint bubble nebula created by the intense radiation and stellar winds from the star. WR134 is classified as an Algol type eclipsing variable and given the designation V1769 Cygni. The star is the whitish one near the center of the bubble. WR134 is extremely hot at 63,000K and is 400,000 times as luminous as our sun. In this image the bubble is shown in doubly ionized oxygen light (OIII) as the round blue/green area just above center. It takes on a brighter wispy look near the top and a more radiating look below that. It seems to almost form a nice circle. Other doubly ionized oxygen emission is scattered in faint streaks. Also the area is full of Hydrogen (HII) emission shown as the red clouds of gas. Two faint reflection nebula next to each other are also shown in the lower part of the image. The image [seen here] is a rotated crop of a larger field of view. The original image combines 3hrs of RGB exposures and 16hrs of HII and over 20hrs of OIII exposures for a total exposure time of 47hrs. Image resolution is 1.28 arcsec/pixel.
- https://www.starscapeimaging.com/WR134/WR134.html
- Optics: #Stellarvue #SVX152T refractor @f8 1200mm FL
- Mount: #Paramount #MYT
- Camera: #ZWO #ASI6200MM
- Filters: #Chroma 50mm RGB OIII #Astrondon 50mm Ha
- Exposure (min): RGBHaOIII 205:195:200:980:1240 47.2 hrs, 2x2 binning
- Automation Control: #TheSkyX, Voyager, #PrimaluceLab Eagle 4
- Guiding: #StarlightXpress Lodestar X2
- Processing Software: #PixInsight, #TopazLabs
- Location: Stark Bayou Observatory, Ocean Springs, MS
