The Vela Molecular Ridge is a series of HII regions that run along the northern edge of the Vela Supernova Remnant. This eight-panel mosaic taken from Chile captures nearly five degrees vertically. The image here is 1/16th the full-size image, which spans 22000×17000 pixels. This was a collaboration over two months with Charles Pevsner, Max Whitby, and Raymond Protière.
RCW27 is at upper left, RCW32 in the middle, and RCW33 at bottom right. Part of the Vela SNR can be seen at upper right. The small reflection nebula embedded in RCW27 is NGC2626. The bright spot at lower-right is Kohoutek 2-15, an HII region miscategorized as a planetary nebula. There are several real planetary nebulae visible as well: Wray 16-23 is at upper left, and Wray 16-32 is at bottom left. (There are others, but they are nearly stellar in size.)
The slightly odd magenta and red hues on the right are due to the unusual mixture of ionized gases in the Vela SNR. You don’t normally get SII signal without H-alpha like that outside of SNRs or planetary nebulae.
- Exposures (eight-panel mosaic, total exposures shown):
- Ha: 147×300s
- SII: 143×300s
- OIII: 171×300s
- Total exposure time: 38 hours 25 minutes
- Taken remotely from DeepSkyChile, Jan and Feb, 2024
- Telescope: Takahashi TOA-130 with flattener (f/7.7)
- Camera: ZWO ASI6200MM-Pro
- Mount: 10Micron GM1000HPS
- Acquisition: NINA
- Processing: AstroPixelProcessor, PixInsight
Deep-sky Imaging 