IC 2574 in H-alpha and continuum light

IC 2574 (also known as Coddington's Nebula) is a very faint dwarf galaxy in Ursa Major. It is a member of the M81 group, one of the nearest groups to the local group, and contains very active star-forming regions showing strong H-alpha emissions. The distance from earth is about 12.8 million light years and the diameter of the visible disk is about 50,000 light years.

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IC 2574 in H-alpha and continuum light — In both images NIR (near infrared) is mapped to red, yellow is mapped to green and blue is mapped to blue. In the version with H-alpha that emission line is shown in reddish orange.
By toggling between the images (click on the button) it can be seen that the HII regions (reddish) correlate with bluish regions. That's because the HII gas clouds typically contain many young (blue) stars which are also responsible for the ionization. Furthermore the HII regions also emit [OIII] and H-beta light which is collected by the blue filter.

IC 2574 in continuum light — In both images NIR (near infrared) is mapped to red, yellow is mapped to green and blue is mapped to blue. In the version with H-alpha that emission line is shown in reddish orange.
By toggling between the images (click on the button) it can be seen that the HII regions (reddish) correlate with bluish regions. That's because the HII gas clouds typically contain many young (blue) stars which are also responsible for the ionization. Furthermore the HII regions also emit [OIII] and H-beta light which is collected by the blue filter.

Image data

FOV:

0.44° × 0.44° (full view)

Date:

2021-2022

Location:

Pulsnitz, Germany

Instrument:

400mm Newton at f=1520mm

Camera Sensor:

Panasonic MN34230

Orientation:

North is up (approximately)

Scale:

0.8 arcsec/pixel

Total exposure times:

H-alpha (3nm):	20.5 h
NIR:	4.4 h
Yellow (540nm to 650nm):	8.2 h
Blue:	4.8 h

Image processing

All image processing steps are deterministic, i.e. there was no manual retouching or any other kind of non-reproducible adjustment. The software which was used can be downloaded here.

Image processing steps where:

Bias correction, dark current subtraction, flatfield correction
Alignment and brightness calibration using stars from reference image
Stacking with masking unlikely values and background correction
Denoising and deconvolution
Color composition
Dynamic range compression using non-linear high-pass filter
Tonal curve correction

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