As we Earth-based gazers stare up at the heavens, we oftentimes relate the various objects we see to familiar-looking terrestrial objects or themes in our efforts to describe what we are seeing either through the eyepiece or on photographic plates or digital images. We name some objects based on their resemblance to familiar objects. Names such as the Rosette Nebula, the Running Man, the Christmas tree cluster, and the Pelican Nebula come to mind, not to mention famous familar shapes like the Horsehead Nebula.
Some objects are named differently based by different cultures. A famous (at least to me) example is Carl Sagan's presentation on Cosmos of how the Big Dipper asterism is referred to as the Plowshare in old England and (pretty creatively) as a bureaucrat being petititioned by the ancient Chinese.
There are some objects that have been given geographic monikers by obvious resemblances - the North America nebula comes to mind.
As I look upon images posted by other astro-imagers, I often find myself playing that Rorshackian (sp?) game of "what do you see?" Not unlike children lying in a field idly calling out what they see in clouds overhead, I ask myself to connect the dots in star clusters or find a shape in a nebula.
As I work through a small backlog of image data collected since January this year, I'd like to present an image that invokes a geographic moniker influenced by a cultural view. There is a dark nebulosity in Monoceros not too far from the Cone Nebula/Fox Fur region in Monoceros. I was not aware of this nebula myself until a year ago, when I was admiring an extreme wide-field narrow-band image of the region by a fellow imager. I resolved to shoot this interesting (at least to me) target.
It is an often-overlooked nebula, overshadowed by the aforementioned more-glamorous Cone and FoxFur nebula. It ofen shows up in images of the region, but is usually presented as a mere afterthought. I believe it is a part of the B36-37-38 dark nebulosity in Monoceros. It may have already been named, but if so I am not aware of any. I thought I'd showcase this nebula as the subject of interest instead as a tribute to my geo-cultural origin.
Without further adieu, may I present to you all what I would like to propose (at least informally) calling the "Philippine Nebula":
http://members.nuvox.net/~on.aunt/DSO/PhilippineNebula.jpg
To my Philippine-colored cultural eyes, when I first saw this nebula it really reminded me of a map of the Philippines, down to the neighboring Indonesian island of Borneo off the tip of the long island Palawan: http://www.gov.ph/aboutphil/philmap.asp With a bit of creative license, I oriented the nebula to match the orientation of the Philippines as laid out in the map.
The above image is a crop of the full-sized image available here:
http://members.nuvox.net/~on.aunt/DSO/MonocerosNebulosity.jpg
This was imaged February 18th with an SBIG STL-6303 camera using an Astrodon 6nm H-alpha filter through a Takahashi FS-102 refractor with a Takahashi f/5.9 reducer. This is a median combine of 5 30-minute exposures. I deliberately oriented my image to place the subject of this image in center stage. I could have framed it so that the Cone Nebula would have fit in the FOV of my optics, but I've been having a lot of misshaped stars in the corners either due to field curvature or a less-than-optimal metal back distance with the reducer used. Surprisingly, the stars seem well-behaved in this image.
Enjoy,
Eric
Some objects are named differently based by different cultures. A famous (at least to me) example is Carl Sagan's presentation on Cosmos of how the Big Dipper asterism is referred to as the Plowshare in old England and (pretty creatively) as a bureaucrat being petititioned by the ancient Chinese.
There are some objects that have been given geographic monikers by obvious resemblances - the North America nebula comes to mind.
As I look upon images posted by other astro-imagers, I often find myself playing that Rorshackian (sp?) game of "what do you see?" Not unlike children lying in a field idly calling out what they see in clouds overhead, I ask myself to connect the dots in star clusters or find a shape in a nebula.
As I work through a small backlog of image data collected since January this year, I'd like to present an image that invokes a geographic moniker influenced by a cultural view. There is a dark nebulosity in Monoceros not too far from the Cone Nebula/Fox Fur region in Monoceros. I was not aware of this nebula myself until a year ago, when I was admiring an extreme wide-field narrow-band image of the region by a fellow imager. I resolved to shoot this interesting (at least to me) target.
It is an often-overlooked nebula, overshadowed by the aforementioned more-glamorous Cone and FoxFur nebula. It ofen shows up in images of the region, but is usually presented as a mere afterthought. I believe it is a part of the B36-37-38 dark nebulosity in Monoceros. It may have already been named, but if so I am not aware of any. I thought I'd showcase this nebula as the subject of interest instead as a tribute to my geo-cultural origin.
Without further adieu, may I present to you all what I would like to propose (at least informally) calling the "Philippine Nebula":
http://members.nuvox.net/~on.aunt/DSO/PhilippineNebula.jpg
To my Philippine-colored cultural eyes, when I first saw this nebula it really reminded me of a map of the Philippines, down to the neighboring Indonesian island of Borneo off the tip of the long island Palawan: http://www.gov.ph/aboutphil/philmap.asp With a bit of creative license, I oriented the nebula to match the orientation of the Philippines as laid out in the map.
The above image is a crop of the full-sized image available here:
http://members.nuvox.net/~on.aunt/DSO/MonocerosNebulosity.jpg
This was imaged February 18th with an SBIG STL-6303 camera using an Astrodon 6nm H-alpha filter through a Takahashi FS-102 refractor with a Takahashi f/5.9 reducer. This is a median combine of 5 30-minute exposures. I deliberately oriented my image to place the subject of this image in center stage. I could have framed it so that the Cone Nebula would have fit in the FOV of my optics, but I've been having a lot of misshaped stars in the corners either due to field curvature or a less-than-optimal metal back distance with the reducer used. Surprisingly, the stars seem well-behaved in this image.
Enjoy,
Eric
