I am afraid I cannot identify the artifact which are referring to. Anyway, please note that my southern sky and below 30 degrees altitude is rather horrific due to light pollution as well as poor seeing and atmospheric extinction due to the low altitude itself. As a result, the background sky in any of my images in this area of the sky is certainly not the best and at times I must also use gradient removal software to identify and correct for light gradients.

To this end, if you see something which seems to be an artifact, I would not be surprised in the slightest.

Many times I must pursue an object five to six times before I can get a result which is half decent due to the aforementioned factors. This opportunity involving Pluto was basically a one-time event with no possibility of a repeat attempt if I wanted Pluto in the dark nebula itself.

Anthony.

Pretty sure it’s just an artifact. Look above where Pluto is and you’ll see a whole bunch of little blue dots and another red smudge.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messier_24

For more on the remarkable and inspiring Edward Emerson Barnard – one of my astronomical heroes who has a truly moving life story – see :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Emerson_Barnard

And for more on another astronomical hero of mine (& pretty much everybodies) Clyde Tombaugh – see :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clyde_Tombaugh

****

“…Marc Buie can very easily imagine what it must be like to walk around on Pluto: with less than 1% of your weight on Earth because of the low gravity, at temperatures of 230 degrees below zero, in the twilight because the Sun is nothing more than a dazzling star in the black sky, across snowfields of methane ice and transparent crystals of frozen nitrogen and with a gigantic moon hanging overhead – at least if you are on the right side of the planet.”
- Page 61, ‘The Hunt For Planet X’, Govert Schilling, Copernicus Books, 2009.

“During its summer, the frozen nitrogen on Pluto evapourates to
create a temporary atmosphere. With the onset of winter the nitrogen
turns to frost and falls back to the surface. On Pluto the winter
weather doesn’t merely deteriorate – it completely disappears.”
- Page 19, ‘The Planets’, McNab & Younger, BBC Worldwide Ltd., 1999.

“The Ramans do everything in threes.”
- Arthur C. Clarke, ‘Rendezvous with Rama’, Final page (252), Pan
Books Ltd, 1973.

I saw the title, and I thought Messier Tidier Upper was going to get a tip or credit for this one.

I wish!

First time I’ve seen this pic – but I absolutely *love* <3 the BA's headline for it.

Of course, its a situation that will be tidied up over years as Pluto wanders across the star cloud and out of Saggitarius .. making it easier to find without the red dot trick.

BTW. Wonder how much more powerful equipment you'd need to have to get to spot Charon in such an image. For the other Plutonian moons Nix and Hydra you'd need something like the Hubble Telescope natch!

Also wonder if the folks running the New Horizons are watching & taking similar images.. and where Pluto will have drifted along to when it arrives in 2015.

@ 6. Wayne on the Plains Says:

@3 Larian, Yeah, I hope he at least says something clever in the comments…

I’m trying – some would say very trying!

Thankyou Anthony Ayiomamitis awesome work.

So when my eye happened to catch a bright red spot in the image, I knew right away I was seeing Pluto.

Although, OTOH, it could’ve been a *really* red carbon star couldn’t it?

..the two dark splotches are thick dust clouds called Barnard 92 and 93.

Which is which btw? Is that Barnard 92 left and B 93 right or vice-versa?

This is one of my favourite images seen here yet for combing three of my fave objects – the ice dwarf planet Pluto, the Messier objects (M24) and E. E. Barnard’s dark nebulae.

“The artist is the medium between his fantasies and the rest of the world.” — Federico Fellini

Not to imply that you are in any way a fantasist, but your image is the work of an artist.

I went back to my original master LRGB image and cropped the area around Pluto and then proceeded to oversample the result to 4x the original size …. I think you will be happy with the result: http://www.perseus.gr/Images/pluto-b92-b93-400pct.jpg ….

Anthony.

My thanks to Phil for using this result and for the various comments thereafter. Some comments from my end follow:

(1) Since M24 is quite low for me, I must resort to good technique to get as much SNR as possible which is normally mitigated at these low altitudes due to atmospheric extinction and poor(er) seeing. To this end, Red has the least atmospheric extinction relative to green and blue and is also the least affected (relatively speaking) with respect to seeing. As a result, it is best to shoot the Red exposures when the target is lowest during the imaging session and which explains why the RED extended dot for Pluto appears first. I am almost certain that Green was shot next, followed by Blue at the maximum altitude for the M24 star cloud since it is the most sensitive to seeing (and also atmospheric extinction) and then followed by Luminance as Pluto was just passed the southern meridian (we want a very good Luminance since the detail for an LRGB image really comes from the Luminance channel)

(2) I used equal length exposures and in spite of the fact the CCD camera and filters have differential transmissions as a combo. This is no big deal since a G2V calibration will reveal the necessary weights to use to get the necessary balance thereafter and which is applied when combining the individual master RGB channels to produce a colour result. Alternatively and as suggested, one can play with the length of exposure between R, G and B to accomplish the same.

(3) On a similar note, it was asked why not take the RGB (or LRGB) images in sequence rather all the reds, all the greens etc. This gets back to (2) above where I want to minimize the affects of atmospheric extinction and poor seeing at less than 30 deg altitude. If I shoot my exposutes as LRGB-LRGB-LRGB-LRGB-etc, I will be mixing bad exposures with relatively better exposures for Blue which is much worse than shooting all of the blue exposures when the target is around the meridian (ie. highest point in the sky for my location and the best possible seeing and lowest possible atmospheric extinction for Blue). Similar argument applies for Green and also for the very important Luminance channel.

(4) A comment was made that CCD cameras are most sensitive in the Red. Actually CCD cameras are most sensitive in the Green (!) and this is where the QE peaks. Depending on the chip, we then have enhanced sensitivity in the Red or Blue. For this exercise, I used an ST-10XME which is known for having very good response in the Red. My other camera (ST-2000XM) is known for having very good response in the Blue and UV and for being very poor in the Red.

I hope the above comments answer some of the concerns and ambiguities raised above.

Anthony.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBp464uBH9A

I’m sure it’s nothing more than Planet X, hurtling directly toward the Earth at terrifying speed.

Using d=160mm and f/7.5, the focal length is 1200mm and using my calculator selecting ST-10XME, I get the FoV 42.3′ x 28.5′.

Going to http://asteroid.lowell.edu/cgi-bin/astplot putting Date = 2010 07 06, Time = 21 00 00 UT (because the time was UT+3), Ra = 18 15 32, Dec = -18 10 48, Lim Mag = 20, Prob 68, Fov RA 2520″ (=42′) and Dec 1710″ (=28.5′)

all other known objects (with the exception of 10696) are too faint to be shown. Also they all have much higher apparent motion than pluto, and in 6 minutes would trail through several arcseconds (pixels) thus reducing the SNR. I doubt you could find 10696 in the image above manually (but should be possible with a reduction software).

And remember, he didn’t even know if it existed!”

Even more incredible is that the reason he was even LOOKING for it, the gravitational pertubations of Uranus’s orbit, never actually existed. He was looking for a much bigger planet (that also never existed), and it was only by coincidence and pure luck* that he found anything at all.

* for “luck” read “totally random chance” if you prefer

So what’s that one, mister smarty-astronomer?!

I suppose that, if all the reds were taken at the end, along with your explanations on CCDs and weighting, that might account for it. I’m not a professional (or even “good amateur”, as the ones the BA posts obviously are) sky-photographer(*), but I would think that one might rotate filters, rather than “a bunch of luminescence”, “a bunch of green”, “a bunch of blue”, and finally “a bunch of red” exposures.

(*) Truth be told, I’ve only done a few shots of the Moon, and some dismal attempts at stars and planets, with my hand-held digital camera.

Yes, I forget that commerical CCDs are most sensitive around the red part. (and yes, I think most are in general- I’ve been working with X-ray CCDs for a while, so I forgot that part of optical CCDs). (open mouth…insert foot!)
I couldn’t find the other colors in the image, except that Pluto was not quite a point source, but slightly elongated.

It is also true, as you said, that the final image depends on the weighting of the colors. The person making the image can weight the frame that they wish to bring out whatever details they want.