Archive for the 'Astrostuff' Category

Observing Report 13th March 2013 (Comet Pan-STARRS (C/2011 L4))

Posted by on March 14th 2013 in Astrostuff, Observing Reports
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I managed to get away for a couple of hours around sundown last night, it was the first clear(ish) evening for a while and the first chance we'd had to have a look at Comet Pan-STARRS (C/2011 L4). Finding it was an interesting experience - too soon after sunset and the skies were still too light, and later when the skies had darkened the comet was so close to the horizon that it stood a chance of being lost in the murk of haze, cloud and light-pollution.

Persistence was the key. Eventually the bank of low snow-cloud moved away and revealed the target. It's not visible with the naked-eye yet during these conditions but it's an impressive sight through 10x50 binoculars. The 70-300 lens on the D50 picked it out quite easily.

Here's one of many pics from the evening, I'll post a few more later:

Comet Pan-STARRS (C/2011 L4).
Nikon D50, 70-300 lens @ 300mm, 5s @ f/7.1, ISO 800, static tripod.

Observing Report 2nd-3rd March 2013 (A mixed bag of Messiers)

Posted by on March 4th 2013 in Astrostuff, Observing Reports
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It wasn't forecast to be the clearest of nights but I'd got the OK to go out and I wasn't going to waste the chance. The skies were fairly clear for the first hour but after that I was battling the orange haze of a low thin mist illuminated by waste light from streetlights. Despite that, I managed to see a fair few things and snap some more Messiers:

M40 (centre-left), a pair of stars in the constellation Ursa Major.
Subs: 12 light @ 300s, darks and bias frames, ISO800.
1000D on the 6" R-C, guided with PHD.

M48 (aka NGC 2548), an open cluster in the constellation Hydra.
Subs: 16 light @ 300s, darks and bias frames, ISO800.
1000D on the 6" R-C, guided with PHD.

M53 (aka NGC 5024), a globular cluster in the constellation Coma Berenices.
Subs: 22 light @ 300s, darks and bias frames, ISO800.
1000D on the 6" R-C, guided with PHD.

Observing Report 15th February 2013 (2012 DA14 and the lights of Leicestershire)

Posted by on February 17th 2013 in Astrostuff, Observing Reports
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Friday evening saw Me and Chris up on Croft Hill, armed with camera kit, binoculars and other such stuff. The intent was to see/image the fly-by of asteroid 2012 DA14 but the weather decided to confound us. Never mind, we got pics of cloud and light-pollution instead, and we got a couple of hours together without the kids.

The main images have been colour-corrected by Photoshop, run your mouse over them to see the horrendously light-polluted uncorrected versions:

Observing Report 14th-15th February 2013 (More galaxies)

Posted by on February 17th 2013 in Astrostuff, Observing Reports
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Virgo's chock-full of galaxies, there are plenty to go around. Here's a small selection, help yourself!

M84 (aka NGC4374) and M86 (aka NGC4406) - both are lenticular galaxies - and a few other fuzzy things in the constellation Virgo.
Mouseover the pic for labels.
Subs: 17 light @ 300s, darks and bias frames, ISO800.
1000D on the 6" R-C, guided with PHD.

Observing Report 6th-7th February 2013 (Incoming at 140km/s)

Posted by on February 11th 2013 in Astrostuff, Observing Reports
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Cribbed from Wikipedia:

"Messier 98 (also known as M98 or NGC 4192) is an intermediate spiral galaxy about 60 million light-years away in the constellation Coma Berenices. It was discovered by Pierre Méchain on 15 March 1781 along with M99 and M100 and was cataloged as a Messier object on 13 April 1781. Messier 98 has a blue shift and is approaching us at about 140 km per second."

Hmmm... "cataloged"... we Brits use the word "catalogue", so use it as a verb and the past tense is "catalogued". Surely the past tense of the verb "to catalog" should be "catalogged", as in "logged" and "blogged"?

Anyway, less of the Inner Stickler stuff. With the temperature down at -8C it was too damned cold to stand outside looking through the scope so the session was just a photo-shoot controlled from the comfort of the warm-room, replete with Jaffa Cakes and hot tea. M98 is one of the faintest objects in Messier's catalogue... I really wanted to be taking 60-second subs of it but a high background haze spoiled that idea - the best I could get away with was 300 seconds a shot, and I didn't get enough subs for a decent image anyway as a low mist rolled in and spoiled things. I'll try to get more subs when the weather improves, in the meantime here's the best I can do with what I've got so far. It's a tad noisy:

M98 (aka NGC4192), an intermediate spiral galaxy in the constellation Coma Berenices.
Subs: 20 light @ 300s, darks and bias frames, ISO800.
1000D on the 6" R-C, guided with PHD.

Observing Report 13th January 2013 (Big sunspot group)

Posted by on January 13th 2013 in Astrostuff, Observing Reports, Pics
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This was the first observing session of the year, primarily because it's been the first time we've had clear skies. Prominent in the image is Active Region 1654. This is a huge group of sunspots, currently about 180,000 km from end to end - that's about 14 Earth-diameters, or, in proper units, about 657 x the length of Wales.

Mouseover the image to see how tiny the Earth would look next to these things, and click the image to see it thrice bigger:

 

Active Region 1654 (13/01/2013)

3000 stacked frames, DMK mono CCD camera at prime focus on the C80ED-R, Baader Planetarium AstroSolar™ Safety Film (ND 3.8) with #58 Green and IR-cut filters
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