R Coronae Australis Nebula Complex

[Back to Gallery]

Mouseover for Effect

cra-wide-refractor

Click to Zoom (Below)


locatorchart

On the way home from a bowling competition yesterday with my son Brett, he quipped “Dad, you’ve done a lot of talking about that cool deep south nebula complex in Corona Australis (CrA). Just when are you going to marry the chrominance and luminance data and deliver the LRGB instead of just a bunch of BS?” Well, Brett, I said, I am going to process the data today and be the astromailman and deliver the goods! Hope he is satisfied with the resulting 9 hour LRGB which is attached as the last deep south summer Milky Way object I will violate this summer go-around. Fall is just a few weeks away but what a fun summer this has been at CAV with such clear skies as to allow me to travel way down low!! The R Coronae Australis region is south of Sagittarius and tops out at about 23 degrees elevation. Of course, much of my data was obtained in between 2.5 and 3.5 atmospheres and much of the red and green data was secured during a bright Moon phase this month (too much blue in moonlight to be allow blue imaging during bright Moon).
Barry Riu first told me about this CrA region during a Sept. 2007 CAV astrosafari and I imaged it that night using my old 6-inch Astro-Physics refractor and SBIG 11K camera in the yard before the observatory was completed. The RCOS was still in the house being “christened”. There are so many interesting objects in the CrA field that I attached a couple of versions (RCOS & 6-inch AP refractor) labeled. The refractor shot also includes the gorgeous globular cluster NGC 6723 which is actually in Sagittarius, not Corona Australis. A number of fantastic images of this area are seen in the links below. My attached uncropped RCOS image includes 15th magn. face-on spiral galaxy PGC 62667 in the lower right hand corner! The 6th magn. double star (SAO 210816) is only 1.5 arcsec apart! There are also a number of variable stars in the region such as TY CrA, R CrA and S CrA. R CrA powers variable nebula NGC 6729. Haro-Herbig (HH) protostar nebulae abound. Brett liked HH 101 and the blue reflection nebulae but wonders why I didn’t include glob NGC 6723 in my RCOS image! Guess someday, I will have to do a mosaic with the RCOS.
P.S. – RCOS CrA image: 3.5 hours LUM 1×1; 2 hour each RGB 2×2; Apogee U16M CCD Camera on 14.5-inch RCOS

https://www.eso.org/public/images/eso1027a/ — ESO image and info

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap150108.html — extremely sharp (probably PixInsight) image

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110627.html — gorgeous very widefield CrA image 2011 APOD

https://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=5520d03d-0000-2d32-9d44-001a113cd066&feature=iv&src_vid=gHP8pxZBxtk&v=N1b7pUHpP5o — neat ESO video