First full color image from the James Webb telescope

Well here it is. The first full color infrared image released from the James Webb telescope. And it’s awesome! This is a region of the sky that represents an area the size of a grain of sand held at arm’s length.

Each of those colorful ellipses and oblong objects are distant galaxies. Only the bright objects with the diffraction spikes are local stars from our own galaxy. And the curved sections around the middle is a even more distant galaxy whose light is being gravitationally bent by a foreground galaxy allowing it's faint light to be magnified and made visible. 

Wow - can't wait for more - and there is more to come for sure!

Full details can be read at NASA and here at SkyandRockets.

First James Webb image to be released today

NASA

The first full color image from the new James Webb telescope will be announced later today. The image, known as “Webb’s First Deep Field,” will be the deepest and highest-resolution view of the universe ever captured. Biden is scheduled to release it today, Monday, July 11, at 5:00pm.

Details on the Webb telescope can be found at nasa.gov

Comet C/2017 K2 (PANSTARRS)

C/2017 K2 (PanSTARRS) is an Oort cloud comet with an inbound hyperbolic orbit, discovered in May 2017 at a distance beyond the orbit of Saturn when it was 16 AU (2.4 billion km) from the Sun. It had been in the constellation of Draco from July 2007 until August 2020. As of June 2022, the estimated distance of the comet from the Sun is ±5000 km. The comet is record breaking because it is already becoming active at such a distance. Only comet Hale–Bopp produced such a show from that distance with a similar nucleus. However, this comet will not be as visible as Hale–Bopp was in 1997 in part because it does not come nearly as close to the Sun.

Comet C/2017 K2 (PANSTARRS)
June 25, 2022
GT102 - ASI533MC - 50x180 sec exposures

On its way to perihelion, C/2017 K2 is currently shining at about mag 7. Missing is the typical greenish glow of a comet's halo that comes from diatomic carbon (C2), a simple yet unstable form of elementary carbon. C/2017 K2 is too far from the sun for the reaction to occur.

M20 - The Trifid Nebula

With the pier maintenance completed it was time to start imaging again.

The Trifid Nebula (catalogued as Messier 20 or M20 and as NGC 6514) is an H II region in the north-west of Sagittarius in a star-forming region in the Milky Way's Scutum-Centaurus Arm. It was discovered by Charles Messier on June 5, 1764. Its name means 'three-lobe'. The object is an unusual combination of an open cluster of stars, an emission nebula (the relatively dense, reddish-pink portion), a reflection nebula (the mainly NNE blue portion), and a dark nebula (the apparent 'gaps' in the former that cause the trifurcated appearance, also designated Barnard 85). Viewed through a small telescope, the Trifid Nebula is a bright and peculiar object, and is thus a perennial favorite of amateur astronomers. (wiki)

Trifid Nebula (M20) - June 27, 2022
William Optics GT102 and ASI533MC Camera
146x60 sec at f/5.5

My image of the Trifid is part of a study I am conducting on the benefits of taking lots of short exposure subs vs a moderate amount of longer exposure subs. Longer subs are prone to satellite and aircraft crossings, clouds, and other image corrupting events, and inaccurate guiding (although my AP1100 mount produces almost perfect guiding). So, it would be really good if you could, say for example, take a hundred 30 second subs and make it produce as good a final image as ten 300 second subs - the total integration time is the same; 50 minutes. 

Preliminary results are encouraging as demonstrated by the image above which was processed as 146 single 60 second broadband subs. Narrowband imaging requires substantially longer subs to collect sufficient light through the special filters and so would not benefit from this technique. But OSC (one shot color) and LRGB filtered mono cameras would benefit.

Check back later when I post the complete study results.