LBN 7, LDN 43 and Some Cometary Nebulae

[jthommes]

The bright nebula LBN 7 is the largest object in this image comprised of materiel reflecting starlight. Within it is the dark nebula LDN 43 (which comes in parts LDN43, B, D, and E) - its material is dense - blocking the light from background stars. Within this dark nebula are two cometary nebulae (GN 16.31.3 and GN 16.31.7).

The cometary nebulae are in several of the catalogs which resulted from different studies of reflection nebula. These other designations are listed in the annotated image. The Magakian Merged Reflection Nebula Catalog (2003) helps to to organize these different designations which I used for annotation.

Also in this image are some background galaxies, 6dF J1634296-152207, 6dF J1633551-153149, 2MFGC 13265 (and others). These three range in distance from 373 to 386 million light years by redshift estimate. One other galaxy 6dF J1636056-155311 has a distance estimate of 1,068 million light years by redshift estimate.

Image and details can be accessed at the link below (or by clicking on the LBN 7 and LDN 43 thumbnail image below); full size image can be accessed from the image webpage and has an image scale of 1.89 arcsec/pixel. The annotated image link is provided below, but that can also be accessed from the image webpage.

• • 
    LBN 7 and LDN 43

Annotated Image:
LBN 7 and LDN 43 Annotated

Scope: Explore Scientific MN152 Maksutov Newtonian at f/4.8
Camera: ST8300M (LRGB filters)
Location: DAA Observatory, Shelter Valley, CA

[Dyno05]

Very nice! Congratulations on the APOD!

[STEVE333]

Really nice delicate processing Jim. Even the "bright" nebula is pretty faint. Looks almost like a shark to me,

Your knowledge of our galaxy always impresses me. I enjoy taking these images, but, don't actually have much of an understanding of the various entities making it up. Thanks for sharing your knowledge with us.

Steve

[Juno16]

Very nice and interesting image Jim. Great work on the processing!

[Ruud]

Beautiful! A bit eerie too: it is the mouth of a cosmic whale shark gorging on stars.

Congrats on the apod!

[Makuser]

Hi Jim. A great LBN 7and LDN 43 image with the ES David Levy telescope from Shelter Valley, CA and I loved the annotated version too. Thanks for sharing this with us on here Jim, and congratulations on winning the TSS APOD Award today.

[jthommes]

Very nice! Congratulations on the APOD!

Thanks for the comment.

Really nice delicate processing Jim. Even the "bright" nebula is pretty faint. Looks almost like a shark to me,
Your knowledge of our galaxy always impresses me. I enjoy taking these images, but, don't actually have much of an understanding of the various entities making it up. Thanks for sharing your knowledge with us.
Steve

Thanks Steve. Yeah, well "bright nebula" is Lynds' term - it really is pretty faint. Most of my knowledge (well, all of it), just comes form seeing interesting things in my images and looking them up. I have to say, Aladin is very useful to me in that effort. And well, Google is helpful too.

Very nice and interesting image Jim. Great work on the processing!

Thanks Jim.

Beautiful! A bit eerie too: it is the mouth of a cosmic whale shark gorging on stars.
Congrats on the apod!

Thanks Ruud. You and Steve both mentioned shark or whale shark. I never saw it until you guys mentioned it.

Hi Jim. A great LBN 7and LDN 43 image with the ES David Levy telescope from Shelter Valley, CA and I loved the annotated version too. Thanks for sharing this with us on here Jim, and congratulations on winning the TSS APOD Award today.

Thanks Marshall. And thanks for mentioning the annotated image. I really have a lot of fun doing those.

[MariusD69]

Wonderful image! Great work, Jim!! Thanks for sharing.

[Graeme1858]

Lovely dark nebula Jim.

Congratulations on the APOD.

Regards

Graeme

[BABOafrica]

A JT image never fails to amaze.

I think I'll nicname this target: "Heartburn"

And, as usual, I really appreciate the annotated image.

BABO

PS And congrats for the TSS APOD award. Well deserved.

[jthommes]

Marius, Graeme, BABO,
Thanks for the comments.
.

A JT image never fails to amaze.
I think I'll nicname this target: "Heartburn"
And, as usual, I really appreciate the annotated image.

BABO

PS And congrats for the TSS APOD award. Well deserved.

Well, actually this image gave me a bit of heartburn. I gathered LRGB exposures. Red and Luminance were gathered at reasonable altitudes. Green and Blue were low and approaching the horizon. There was a lot of extinction for the Blue and Green. My mistake since I set up the sequence this way. Anyway, the color calibration factors to correct for the extinction were pretty extreme - and color was still bad. I used 'Linear Fit' (first time I have used this process) in PixInsight with Red as reference against Green and Blue and reran color calibration. Things were much improved and required only a little tweaking. Some of the dimmer stars' color is still a bit wonky, but I'll take it as a save.

[BABOafrica]

Thanks for the explanation.

Color calibration... Yeah, that's sometimes the hardest part of the processing.

BABO

[XCalRocketMan]

Excellent image and outstanding process. Congrats on the TSS APOD.