| Description: | Christmas evening was very cold and clear so I decided to try imaging Hanny's Voorwerp, something I wanted to do ever since I heard about it. But for this object, I needed a very clear, moonless night with the constellation of Leo Minor high in the sky, and it took some time before those conditions were met. Since my telescope has only 20cm aperture, I made 36 integrations of 5 minutes, about the maximum my local sky conditions allow before the sky background becomes too bright. To my surprise the Voorwerp was clearly visible as a bright green blob after I stacked (averaged) all images to reduce the background noise. I found a comparison image of the Voorwerp that was made by Bill Keel with the 90cm SARA telescope at Kitt Peak http://www.astr.ua.edu/keel/research/voorwerp.html and I rescaled it to compare it with my own image. The SARA image is on the left. My image has been treated with DDP (Digital Darkroom Processing) to enhance the faint nebulosity while keeping bright sources intact.
I will place some more images on my website soon: http://astropix.nl |
