Greetings Sacred Space Astronomy readers! Have you had a chance to watch the presentations from the Wonder Conference? I hope you have! I’ll have my follow-up ready in about a week and then we can begin our discussion.
As a brief interlude, I am happy to report I finally had a rare collection of events for this summer: A free evening that allows me to stay out late, clear skies, and no wildfire smoke! What was the result? Three hours of data collection on the North American Nebula. Here are the details of how the image collection was achieved:
Camera – ZWO 1600 Monochrome Cooled Camera (I kept the sensor temperature at -5 degrees Centigrade… I can’t remember the exact gain setting, but it was low.)
Exposures – One hour of data collected with a Luminance filter, one hour of data collected with a Hydrogen Alpha (Ha) filter (7 nanometers), and one hour of data collected with an Oxygen III (OIII) filter (6 nanometers). The Ha filter only collects light from a narrow band of the red part of the light spectrum and the OIII filter only collects light from a narrow band of the blue part of the light spectrum.
Due to weather conditions, I limited my exposures to 30 seconds each to ensure I had good star shapes. Do the math: two exposures per minute, 180 minutes of exposure, 360 images, and I threw out about 20% of them that were slightly out of focus due to occasional wind gusts. From there, I stacked the 290 images, assigned each a color channel to convert them from monochrome to color and edited them. What was the result? Take a look!
What do you think? It’s called the North American Nebula because it has similarities in shape to the continent of the same name. Most images of the North American Nebula are framed so “Texas and Florida” of the Nebula are positioned in a similar fashion to a map of North America. When I examined my preview image, I found this composition to be more interesting. Therefore, my apologies to the astrophotography purists who will explain “you got the composition wrong!” Yes, I know I did – And it was intentional. I’ll go to confession next week.
There are many spiritual reflections I want to offer about this image, but I’ll save those for the future. For now, enjoy this image! What does it say to you? How does it reveal the beauty of God’s creation in your heart? How will you pray with this icon of God’s creation?
Happy Monday Everyone!
