July | 2020 | A/Prof. Ángel R. López-Sánchez

Monthly Archives: July 2020

A test of the Eagle Nebula from Sydney

Posted on July 16, 2020 | Leave a comment

This is my first test image of the Eagle Nebula (M 16) using my amateur equipment from my backyard, 15 km North from Sydney’s city center, on 1st July 2020.

This image compiles 32 x 300s images (2 hours 40 minutes total integration time) obtained with my Skywatcher Black Diamond 80, an Orion X0.8 focal reducer (f/6), the ZWO ASI178MC camera and an OPTOLONG L-Pro filter.

I used the ZWO ASIAir to control the camera, the mount (Skywatcher AZ-EQ6) and the guiding system (ASI120MM + Orion 50mm finderscope).

Flats and darks included. Data processed with Siril software. Color / saturation / levels / contrast / smart sharpen with Photoshop.

Full resolution image in my Flickr.

Credit: Ángel R. López-Sánchez (AAO-MQ).

Video: Understanding the colours of nebulae

Posted on July 5, 2020 | Leave a comment

Today I’ve released in my YouTube Channel the very first video of a series that seeks to connect professional astrophysics with amateur astronomy and outreach. This video, is entitled “Understanding the colours of the nebulae“, or why square brackets are important when naming metallic transitions in nebulae.

Do you know how profesional astrophysicists and amateur astronomers get vibrant colour images of nebulae? In this video I provide insights of the Physics behind these images. I emphasise why the ionic transitions of metallic elements (i.e., any element that is not hydrogen or helium) in nebulae must be written with brackets, as they are not recombination lines but collisional excited lines, that is, a kind of forbidden lines that only appear in extreme low-density gases because of the collision of ions with free electrons in the gas.

The video includes my subtitles in both English and Spanish.

An extended article about the video will be added here soon.

I hope you like it! And remember: