MadMan's Astronomy and Astrophotography Pages - Photos of the Week
Photos of The Week - August, 2016 and NASA Science Poster
NASA / University of Maryland intern research group chooses one of my images as the background for their
Star Award winning research and poster presentation:

Congratulations to Austin Kim, Lucas Tax, Neetika Sharma and Kenji Hamaguchi on winning the Star award for their poster presentation in
the category: Science from NASA GSFC .  The group was performing research on Gamma Cassiopeiae and Gamma Cass analogues and
contacted me in July asking if they could use an image of mine from 2012 as the background to present their findings.   I gladly obliged.  The
team performed X-ray spectral and timing analysis using archival XMM-Newton data of the y Cas and its brightest analogue,  HD 110432,
to find supporting evidence that a compact companion is responsible for an observed phenomenon of unusually strong X-ray emission
emanating from Gamma Cas.

The Star award is one of the awards given to the top three teams for each category: Science, Engineering, GSFC Functional Services,
Computer Science/ IT.  Their poster was selected out of 108 posters.
Gamma Cas Nebula (IC 59 and IC 63):

IC 59 and IC 63 are a combination of emission and reflection nebulae located near Gamma Cassiopeiae in the middle of the Cassiopeia asterism that
looks like the letter "M" or "W" depending on whether the constellation is above or below Polaris.  The blue reflection portion of the nebulosity is
illuminated by the light of Gamma, the brilliant blue star in the frame.  

Gamma is also known as Navi, a nickname given to it by Virgil Ivan Gus Grissom, the second astronaut in space for the United States.  He named
this star after his own middle name spelled backwards. Gamma, was used for celestial navigation because it was easy to find and identify visually.
Original Image /
Processing:

Done in both broad and
narrowband wavelengths, this
imaging session combined LRGB
and Ha, S2 and O3 filtered data in
numerous ways.  The below
image was done using only some
of this data as described.  The
SXVR-H694 camera was used in
a Takahashi FSQ 106 EDXiii
refractor @ f3.7.

2h20m of Ha, 1 h each of Sii and
Oiii and 30 minute each of LRGB
allow for many combinations.
HaRGB+HaLum
Mouse-over the below to see the groups data and poster results
Click Below for the group's research poster - reduced size