IC
444 Nebula in Gemini.
The constellation
Gemini is home to several large
emission nebulae. One of the biggest is
IC
443, sometines called the "Jellyfish Nebula" because of its unique
appearance. Just to the north of the Jellyfish is a small patch of
nebulosity which is IC 444. It lies adjacent to the bright stars
11 and 12 Geminorum. It appears to be an emission nebula, but with
a bright center.. Most maps of the sky also catalog IC 444 as
vdB 75.
Sidney van
den Bergh published his
list of
reflection nebulae in 1966. It is likely that he was referring
to the reflection nebulosity around 12 Geminorum as vdB 75, visible in
this image. For more information about IC 444, see the
Wikipedia entry.
This image was made with my ASA 10N astrograph and STL11000M CCD. I added 12 hours of hydrogen alpha (Ha) to 14.7 hours of Luminance, Red, Green and Blue flters (LRGB). The total exposure time was 26.7 hours. Processing was done in MaximDL and Photoshop.
An annotated version can be found here.
.
This page illustrates what can be photographed using amateur telescopes and a CCD camera. I currently use an SBIG STL11000M camera and have previously used SBIG and Starlight Xpress cameras, as well as a Cookbook 245 camera that I built myself. Many of the images o this web site were taken from my backyard near a busy street with several street lights. Not only is the CCD camera a great imaging tool, but it allows "real time" observation of objects not normally visible in areas with moderate-severe light pollution.
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