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Astronomical Photographer Captures His ‘Best Photo’ Yet of Tadpole Nebula After Decades of Attempts

‘A Cosmic Genesis, IC 410.’ With a color palette typical of Hubble images, this image shows sulfur in red, hydrogen in green, and oxygen in blue.

Exceptionally talented Finnish astronomical nature photographer and visual artist J-P Metsävainio is very passionate about the cosmos. His latest image of IC 410, better known as the Tadpole Nebula, is a perfect example of his passion and how his craft has evolved over the decades.

Since 2008, when he captured his very first photo of IC 410, Metsävainio has upgraded his photography skills, post-processing techniques, and equipment. The progression is apparent when looking at his images of the Tadpole Nebula in 2010, 2012, 2015 (and in 3D), and 2020 (twice). His latest image, “A Cosmic Genesis, IC 410,” is his most dynamic, detailed, and beautiful capture yet.

“This must be one of my best photos so far, I’m very pleased [with] the result,” Metsävainio says. “I have been shooting this target over and over again during the decades and every time it has had something new to show and tell to me.”

He remarks, “This nebula looks like a microscopic photo of human fertilization, where new life is about ot be born, when germ cells are meeting each other.”

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Colorful cosmic scene of IC 410, featuring wispy, bright orange and yellow clouds set against a backdrop of star-filled space with shades of blue and purple. Some clouds appear as distinct, elongated shapes.
A closer view shows the tadpoles up close. New stars form at the tips, where gravity forces the gas and dust to collapse. Nuclear fusion begins once the pressure is high enough and there is sufficient stellar material. Then stars are born.

However, instead of new human life, the Tadpole Nebula is giving rise to new stars. The appropriately named tadpoles in the photo are not microscopic, of course, but about ten light-years long — or nearly 60 trillion miles.

The Tadpole Nebula is about 10 light-years from Earth, and thanks to excellent seeing conditions during Metsävainio’s lengthy exposure times, he captured a very sharp image. The total exposure time is around 32 hours, collected over several nights during three months from the end of 2024 through this month.

Metsävainio used a 14-inch Celestron Edge telescope with narrowband filters, paired with an Apogee Alta U9000M imaging camera and Lodestar guiding cameras. These specialized filters help isolate specific wavelengths of light, which can better expose different elements in space, including H-alpha, O-III, and S-II emissions. Metsävainio captured H-alpha wavelengths for 20 hours via 60 1,200-second exposures, O-III with 21 shots for seven hours, and S-II emissions across 15 exposures for five hours. Viewers can see a single calibrated 20-minute exposure of H-alpha below to get a sense of what a single piece of the puzzle looks like.

Grayscale image of a star-filled nebula with cloudy, diffuse shapes and varying intensities of light. Stars are scattered throughout, creating a celestial scene against the darker space backdrop.
A singe calibrated 20-minute exposure of H-alpha emissions. The final color image is created through careful processing, extracting as much detail as possible, and then assigning color channels to specific wavelengths. And, of course, a lot of stacking. More information on how astronomical photos are turned from monochrome into color is available in this PetaPixel interview with STScI image processors Joe DePasquale and Alyssa Pagan.

Once all these individual images are captured, they must be processed to extract as much detail as possible.

“It’s very easy to lose details in very dark or bright areas. Since the signal in astronomical images is usually very low, the dynamic range is extremely wide. The photo straight from the camera is linear, the photo needs to be stretched to a nonlinear format, as the human eye perceives things nonlinearly,” Metsävainio tells PetaPixel. “In practice, this is done by brightening dark areas and lowering the luminosity of bright areas. If not done carefully, details can be lost at both ends of the histogram. In this photo, the problematic areas are the background — there are no truly black regions — and the brighter parts of the nebula, especially the heads of the tadpoles.”

Thanks to the advantageous viewing conditions, improved equipment that enables longer exposure times, and careful, better processing work, Metsävainio can view new details he has never seen in IC 410. He shared a GIF comparing a 2012 photo of IC 410 against his new one, noting that the tadpoles are more detailed now.

A vibrant nebula with swirling clouds of blue, orange, and yellow against a dark backdrop of space. Countless stars are scattered throughout, creating a striking celestial scene.
This comparison of a 2012 image versus the new 2025 one shows massive improvements in detail. Any slight star movement is due to different curvatures between the optical setups.

“The details in the tadpoles are much clearer in the new version, the dark nebulae now show fine structures, and the gas complex at the lower left — barely visible in the 2012 photo — now reveals beautiful details. The amount and clarity of the stars are amazing in the new version, along with many other small features that have now been captured.”

“Looking at my versions from 2008 to the latest one, I can see a constant evolution. My processing skills have improved, and the exposure time has increased. The main difference is the depth of the photo and the amount of detail I was able to bring out,” the artist explains.

Metsävainio says he has also learned “countless small things” over the years, “silent bits of knowledge” as he describes them, that influence his entire workflow, including planning capture sessions and post-processing.

However, he adds, “I don’t see my older material as bad — just as a different artistic interpretation.” There’s a great lesson there for photographers who look at their old photos and wonder what could have been had they been able to take their current gear back to the past. Older images are just different, they don’t need to be considered worse. The art changes with the artist, after all.

A vivid astronomical image of the IC 410 nebula. It shows swirling clouds of gas in blue and orange hues against a backdrop of stars. The colors form intricate patterns, showcasing celestial beauty within the universe.
IC 410 in visual colors, close to a natural color palette. Sulfur and hydrogen are assigned to red, while oxygen is blue.

Metsävainio notes that taking his current imaging setup back a decade ago could have overwhelmed his skill and experience at the time.

“In some cases, the result could even be worse than with a less expensive [less complicated] setup,” he says.

Although Metsävainio believes that after working with IC 410 for a couple of decades, his amazing new image wraps up an important chapter.

“I feel that the story this photo tells has finally been fully realized,” he says. “This makes it my favorite image of the nebula.”

“Well, actually, the story isn’t quite over,” he adds, saying he plans to shoot the area again in a few years with a different optical configuration as a wide-field photo. He hopes to “reveal faint details in the surrounding dust cloud.”

But for now, with the perfect blend of time, experience, skill, and, of course, a love for the cosmos, J-P Metsävainio’s new photo says what he wants to say about the Tadpole Nebula, and is it ever a beautiful image.


Image credits: All images by J-P Metsävainio. Metsävainio shares his work on his blog, Astro Anarchy, which serves as an imaging diary. He also shares work on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and hosts an image archive.


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