Haast Eagle

Haast Eagle

Dark Structure in Cha II Cloud

Constellation: Chamaeleon
Ra: 12h 56m 02s
Dec: -77d 16m 22s
Distance: 550 light years
Image Size: 2.67 x 2.67 deg.
North: Up; East Left

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Description

I have a close-up (35 x 35′) of the Chamaeleon II dark cloud structure (Cha II Dark Cloud) taken with my 20″ CDK20, but wanted to explore a wider view. This image was also taken at the iTelescope facility at Siding Spring, NSW, Australia with system T10 using a Takahashi TOA130 super-reduced refractor (2.7 x 2.7 deg.). As described by Chadwick and Cooper in Imaging the Southern Sky, they named it the Haast Eagle because the dark pair of clouds near the top appear as stretched wings of an eagle.Cha II is one of the three large dark cloud structures in the southern constellation of Chamaeleon about 550 light years distant, and represents an area of new star formation. These structures are one of the closest dark cloud structures to our Sun. You can see that the dark clouds extinguish most of the light from the stars within and behind them. Cha II is considered to contain about 1500 2000 solar masses of material. Spezzi et al. (2008) determined that the Cha II cloud is turning some 8 solar masses into stars every million years.

Exposure: 4 hrs RGB
Telescope: Takahashi TOA130 f/5.9 762 mm
Mount: Software Bisque Paramount ME
Oag: BORG 250 Guide Scope
Acquisition: ACP
Calibration: CCD Stack 2.0
Observatory Site: T10, iTelescope.net, Siding Spring, NSW, Australia
Camera: SBIG STX16803
Filters: Astrodon Gen 2 E-Series RGB
Guider: Starlight Xpress Lodestar SX2
Camera Operation: MaximDL
Processing: CCD Stack 2.0; Photoshop CC 2021
Image Date: 04/09/2021 - 04/10/2021

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