Last week I posted a view from the Widefield Rig that showed NGC1893 together with it's neighbours and I promised a closer look. Courtesy of the Midfield Rig, here it is!
The "tadpoles" are made of denser, cooler gas and dust, and they point in the direction opposite to the center of the NGC1893 cluster. The heads of these structures are believed to be sites of ongoing star formation.
This image was taken using 6 filters. The gaseous portions were captured using Hydrogen, Sulfur and Oxygen narrowband filters that are designed to only let through the light that is a result of ionized gas. Each narrowband exposure was 10 minutes long, and 52 images were taken, which is a total of 520 minutes or a little more than 8 1/2 hours. You can see just the HSO gas from those 3 filters here:
And then more traditional red, green and blue filters were used to get the colour of the stars. Each exposure was 5 minutes and there were 36 of them for a total of 180 minutes, or 3 hours. The star data was then merged into the gas data which resulted in this image:
NGC1893 is a young open cluster located within the IC410 nebula. The cluster is approximately 4 million years old. This cluster plays a significant role in ionizing the gas of IC410, leading to the nebula's distinct appearance.
What I said last week, "NGC 1893 is a gorgeous open star cluster nestled within the heart of the IC 410 nebula, approximately 12,000 light-years away from Earth. What makes NGC 1893 particularly captivating is its association with the iconic "Tadpole Nebula," named for the tadpole-shaped structures formed by interstellar winds and radiation from the cluster's brilliant young stars. These tadpoles, which are actually dense knots of gas and dust, stretch over 10 light-years in length."
Comments