Our observation of Carina Nebula (NGC 3372) was taken with a Prompt 5 telescope in Chile, South America. We used Halpha, OIII, SII, B, V, R, and Lum filters. These observations came out a lot more transparent and had a lot more detail. We believe the higher definition is because of the weather and humidity at night. We have had clear skies the past few nights, which have been perfect for observing. The exposure time for Halpha, OIII, and S2 is 300.0s. The exposure for filter B was 80.0s. The exposure time for filter V was 60.0s. The exposure time for filter R was 40.0s. The exposure time for Lum is 20.0s. These different exposure times helped us get better photos due to the color filters used.
Once all of the photos have been stacked, aligned, grouped, and assigned colors, we end up with this.
This image is great but we knew that it could be better. We took observations from the Wide Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) and the Two Micron Infrared Science Archive to achieve a greater wavelength band. This allowed us to see through more dust. We used SkyView to download these Fit files to add them to our original photo.
This was what the image turned into after we included the archived images.
To determine the size of our star forming region we needed to implement the small angle formula. S=r*Theta. Using the plotter tool we were able to determine a theta of 8.5 arcmins and using Wikipedia we determined our r value was 2600pc or 2.6Kpc. We ended up with a R_s value equal to 6.4pc. Obviously this only relates to the small portion of the region we sampled in our picture. After adding most of all of the spectral classes ionizing fluxes we got a total of R_*=1.35×10^50. We then plugged R_s and R_* into our equation to achieve the number density of ionized hydrogen within the region. Our numer equated to N_h+=122.54 cm^-3.
The light coming from the central star of this region is doing all of the ionization that is exciting the hydrogen enough to ionize it until it becomes a ionized hydrogen. A good way to think of a star forming region is almost like a giant e/m experiment that is thousands of light years away. Pretty Cool!