Deep Space Collection # 22. Southern Tadpoles

Gum 37 is a stunning emission nebula located in the constellation Carina, about 9,000 light-years away from Earth, however it is often overlooked by astrophotographers due to the fact that it is near other spectacular deep space objects such as the Carina Nebula and the Statue of Liberty Nebula. This massive cloud of glowing gas and dust spans over 50 light-years and contains the open cluster NGC 3572. It gets its name due to the similarity to IC 410, the Tadpole Nebula, in the Northern Hemisphere. About the Deep Space Collection: Shot entirely with my rooftop telescope from the urban skies of Buenos Aires, the Deep Space Collection features many objects observable only from the southern hemisphere. All images in the collection were shot using individual narrowband filters which cut off most of the light and allow only very specific wavelengths to pass (the light emitted from ionized hydrogen, oxygen and sulfur), making it possible to photograph deep space objects even from the highly light polluted skies of the city. The images from each separate filter are then processed individually, combined and mapped to RGB channels for a final color image. Two different color mapping palettes were used in this collection: SHO, where sulfur is mapped to red, hydrogen to green and oxygen to blue in what is referred to as "Hubble Palette" processing (as used in the images the famous space telescope) and HOO, where hydrogen is mapped to red, and oxygen to blue and green.