Archive for the 'Pics' Category

Observing Report 3rd-4th May 2011 (A Cluster and a Ring)

Posted by on May 5th 2011 in Astrostuff, Observing Reports, Pics
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I'll spare you the usual details, suffice to say that it was a warmish night, nice and clear and with a light breeze so I was out with the baby R-C scope looking at more Messier Objects. It was a late start and a short session, as from 4 a.m. onwards it was too light to take pics.

As before, I'll let the results do the talking:

M10 (aka NGC 6254), a globular cluster in the constellation Ophiuchus.
Subs: 7 light @ 300s, darks and bias frames, ISO400.
1000D on the 6" R-C, guided with PHD.

 M57 (aka NGC 6720, The Ring Nebula), a planetary nebula in the constellation Lyra.
Subs: 16 light @ 300s, dark and bias frames, ISO400.
1000D on the 6" R-C with 2x PowerMate, guided with PHD.

 

M57 really needs a lot more data, I'll try to get more next time out.

Observing Report 8th-9th April 2011 Part 2 (Saturn and globs)

Posted by on April 15th 2011 in Astrostuff, Observing Reports, Pics
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Well, we waited a while for darkness to fall and for Saturn to become visible. I trained the scope on it only to find it hiding behind the topmost leaves of a bush. We waited a while longer and then found that it had gone behind a tree. More waiting ensued before it cleared all of the obstructions, and then the guests all got a view of it through the eyepiece. After they were all suitably impressed by the planet and by the few Saturnian moons that were visible, I swapped the eyepiece for the camera and we all watched it on the laptop for a while. As an added bonus those not glued to the screen got to see the ISS pass overhead.

Visit over and goodbyes said, I went back to pack away. Trouble was, the sky was incredibly clear and the seeing was much better than usual. It was too good an opportunity to miss...

Before long I'd got the 1000D set up on the 6" R-C and the DMK was back on the guide-scope. A fair few globular clusters were visible unaided so I took a few runs of images and did some visual observing over the next few hours. Intermittent high wispy clouds spoiled a lot of the data but I ended up with a few reasonable frames for stacking. At the end of the session I was fair knackered as I'd spent nearly 12 hours either behind the scope or in front of the lappy, but it was worth it.

M3 (aka NGC 5272), a globular cluster in the constellation Canes Venatici.
Subs: 11 light @ 300s, darks and bias frames, ISO400.
1000D on the 6" R-C with 2x PowerMate, guided with PHD.

M5 (aka NGC 5904), a globular cluster in the constellation Serpens.
Subs: 14 light @ 300s, darks and bias frames, ISO800.
1000D on the 6" R-C with 2x PowerMate, guided with PHD.

M92 (aka NGC 6341), a globular cluster in the constellation Hercules.
Subs: 11 light @ 300s, darks and bias frames, ISO400.
1000D on the 6" R-C with 2x PowerMate, guided with PHD.

Observing Report 8th-9th April 2011 Part 1 (Afternoon Moon)

Posted by on April 14th 2011 in Astrostuff, Observing Reports, Pics
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As I've said before, observing the early phases of the Moon from my obsy is a bit of a lottery - due to the restricted western view the only way to get the scope pointing at the thin waxing crescent is when the Moon's high in the western sky. This time around it was late in the afternoon... sunny... hot... not the best conditions for this sort of thing.

I'd invited some friends around to have a go with the scope so I'd got set up with an hour to spare. While waiting for them to arrive I grabbed some video data for another lunar mosaic. Processing was difficult but eventually a passable result was achieved:

 The Moon.
11-pane mosaic created with PSCS3.
Each pane 100/2000 frames stacked with K3CCDTools3.
DMK mono CCD camera on the 6" R-C, unguided.

 

When the guests arrived we did some visual observing and also did some lunar exploring using the DMK for looking and the laptop for display. A few interesting bits were recorded, here are the results:

(mouseover the pics for the annotated versions):

Rheita (42 miles dia.), Stiborius A (19 miles dia.), Metius (53 miles dia.),
Watt (40 miles dia.), Steinheil (41 miles dia.), Fabricius (47 miles dia.),
Vallis Rheita (303 x 18 miles)

 Romer (24 miles dia.), Chacornac (31 miles dia.), Newcomb (24 miles dia.),
Macrobius (39 miles dia.), Dorsa Aldovandi (73 miles long)

Isidorus (25 miles dia.), Capella (30 miles dia.), Gutenberg (45 miles dia.),
Gutenberg D (12 miles dia.), Goclenius (33 miles dia.), Magelhaens (25 miles dia.),
Magelhaens A (19 miles dia.), Bellot (10 miles dia.), Colombo (46 miles dia.),
Colombo A (25 miles dia.)

Endymion (76 miles dia.), Keldysh (20 miles dia.), Hercules (42 miles dia.),
Atlas (53 miles dia.), Atlas A (13 miles dia.), Burg (24 miles dia.),
De La Rue (82 miles dia.)

Piccolomini (53 miles dia.), Neander (30 miles dia.), Stiborius (27 miles dia.),
Rupes Altai (short section) (291 miles long)

Eventually the Moon dropped out of our field of view so we went in for a brew and waited a few hours for darkness to reveal some other targets.

Observing Report 3rd-4th April 2011 (Saturn in opposition)

Posted by on April 6th 2011 in Astrostuff, Observing Reports, Pics
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Once a year the Earth passes almost exactly between the Sun and Saturn, at this time Saturn is said to be in opposition (Saturn and the Sun are directly opposite each other relative to an Earth-bound observer). With the Earth being "piggy in the middle", it stands to reason that at that time Saturn will be illuminated almost exactly face-on from behind the Earth, and this causes an interesting phenomenon, The Seeliger Effect. This is an apparent relative brightening of Saturn's rings due to the fact that we don't see so many shadows between the rings and between the ring particles.

This year's opposition occurred at 01:00 BST (00:00 UTC) on the 4th of April. I managed to get several imaging runs of it during the period one hour either side of the actual opposition, typically at the exact time there were clouds in the way so time-wise the closest I could manage was at about 00:10 BST:

 

Saturn in opposition
8" Newtonian, SPC900NC webcam, eyepiece-projection.
300/5400 frames stacked with RegiStax6, post-processing with PSCS3

Observing Report 13th-14th March 2011 (Moon and Messiers)

Posted by on March 21st 2011 in Astrostuff, Observing Reports, Pics
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More or less the same as before - more practice with the 1000D. I really could do with getting a Barlow or a Powermate so as to get a better imaging scale for these smaller targets. Oh, and I did a bit of lunar imaging, you might want to click on the pic to see it at the original size 🙂

M102 (aka The Spindle Galaxy, NGC 5866), a lenticular galaxy in the constellation Draco.
Subs: 20 light @ 300s, darks and bias frames, ISO400.
1000D on the 6" R-C, guided with PHD.

As previous, cropped, and enhanced.

M64 (aka The Black Eye Galaxy, NGC 4826), a spiral galaxy in the constellation Coma Berenices.
Subs: 20 light @ 300s, dark and bias frames, ISO400.
1000D on the 6" R-C, guided with PHD.

As previous, cropped, and enhanced.

 The Moon.
24-pane mosaic created with iMerge.
Each pane 50/1000 frames stacked with K3CCDTools3.
DMK mono CCD camera on the 6" R-C, unguided.

Observing Report 7th-8th March 2011 (Even More Messiers)

Posted by on March 21st 2011 in Astrostuff, Observing Reports, Pics
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Usual story... sub-zero, still and clear... out with the baby R-C scope looking at more Messier Objects. Different camera, though - I'd sold a few redundant items and used the proceeds to get a refurbished Canon 1000D body at a knock-down price. Time to give it a trial run.

Imaging-wise the process wasn't much different, with the exception of the need to take bias-frames to counter the read-out signal of the camera's CMOS sensor - this is something that I never had to do with the Nikon D50, as the CCD sensor in it has a very low read-out signal. Still, it's a small price to pay for not having to contend with long-exposure amp-glow - the Nikon had a bit of it, the Canon has none at all. Oh, and I was using different capture software - APT - which turned out to be excellent.

Anyway, I'll let the results do the talking:

M51a (aka NGC 5194), an interacting spiral galaxy in the constellation Canes Venatici.
M51b (aka NGC 5195) is the smaller companion galaxy.
Subs: 20 light @ 300s, darks and bias frames, ISO400.
1000D on the 6" R-C, guided with PHD.

 As previous, cropped, enhanced and over-cooked.

M12 (aka NGC 6218), a globular cluster in the constellation Ophiuchus.
Subs: 9 light @ 300s, dark and bias frames, ISO400.
1000D on the 6" R-C, guided with PHD.

 The Leo Triplet - M65 (NGC 3623, upper-right), M66 (NGC 3627, lower-right) and NGC 3628 (lower-left) - a group of galaxies in the constellation Leo (as if you hadn't worked that out already).
Subs: 15 light @ 300s, dark and bias frames, ISO400.
1000D on the 6" R-C, guided with PHD.

 

Methinks I'll get to like this Canon a bit sooner than I thought.
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