Waid Observatory

Object: IC 410
Date: Oct. & Nov., 2017   -   Location: Dark Sky Observatory, Davis Mountains, TX
Telescope: Televue Genesis 102mm Refractor  -  Camera: SBIG STL-6303
Exposure: SII = 300 min., Ha = 300 min., OIII = 480 min., RGB for stars = 60 min. each
Image Credit: Preston Starr and Donald Waid
Click on the image below to view at higher resolution.

IC 410
IC 410 in Auriga1

IC 410 is a faint emission nebula in the constellation Auriga.  It is approximately 12,000 light-years from the Earth.  This area of glowing gas and dust is over 100 light-years in diameter.  The nebula is excited by an embedded open star cluster designated NGC 1893 that formed approximately 4 million years ago.  In cosmic standards, this was a very recent event.  These young, and very energetic, stars have shaped and eroded the surrounding gas and dust with their strong stellar winds and radiation.  Two such structures, located in the eleven o'clock position of the blue portion of the image, are known as the Tadpoles in IC 410.

The image above was assembled from three narrowband filtered images.  These consisted of SII mapped to red, Ha mapped to green, and OIII mapped to blue.  The Ha filtered image was also used for the luminance channel.  The resulting image is a false color image using the standard Hubble pallete.  The stars were overlaid with RGB data to give them a near true color appearance.

1https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap060815.html

 
Copyright Donald P. Waid