Archive for the 'Observing Reports' Category

Observing Report 10th-11th December 2012 (Part 1 – Kemble’s Cascade)

Posted by on December 11th 2012 in Astrostuff, Observing Reports
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Here you go - Kemble's Cascade - a fine asterism and one of the objects on the Moore Winter Marathon list.

To me it always looks like a waterfall of colourful stars spilling from the NGC1502 cluster.

You'll need to click it to see it in any great detail.

 

Kemble's Cascade, an asterism in the constellation Camelopardalis.
2 stitched images. Subs: 12 & 8 light @ 150s, darks and bias frames, ISO800.
1000D on the C80ED-R refractor, guided with PHD.


You won't need a telescope - you should be able to see the Cascade well enough through binoculars, and it's a fair size - you could fit five of our Moons into the above pic.

It's easy to find too, so long as you can locate the Big W:

Observing Report 29th-30th November 2012 (Another coloured Moon)

Posted by on December 1st 2012 in Astrostuff, Observing Reports
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I was out Moon-gazing again the other night. It was so damned cold that I didn't feel the need to use the camera cool-box, the sensor was well below zero throughout the imaging run. This time I decided to get full-frame shots instead of video. With the 1000D on the 6" R-C I took 50 subs with APT, stacked them in K3CCDTools3, applied wavelets in RegiStax and colour-enhanced the result in Photoshop. I reckon it's a bit better than my previous effort:

Observing Report 17th-18th November 2012 (Part 1 – in like a lion, out like a… bull)

Posted by on November 18th 2012 in Astrostuff, Observing Reports
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I spent ages outside in the freezing cold last night trying to catch some Leonid (LEO) meteors on camera. There were quite a few about and I was pointing the camera in the right direction, but after taking 443 30-second exposures I'd not managed to get one in shot.

I did, however, manage to snap this little beauty racing eastward between Auriga and Cassiopeia - it's a Taurid, probably a Northern Taurid (NTA):

I'm quite pleased with that result, and the whole exercise was good practice for next month's Geminids (GEM).

Observing Report 2nd-3rd and 5th-6th November 2012 (Addendum)

Posted by on November 16th 2012 in Astrostuff, Observing Reports
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Nearly forgot about this one!

I was using the Canon EOS 1000D on the 6" R-C scope and trying out the Planetary Mode of BackyardEOS. Using this mode of the software lets me make .avi files which can then be frame-stacked by other software such as RegiStax. The colours are natural, all I've done is to increase the saturation using Photoshop. The result's rough & ready but at least it's a start:

Observing Report 2nd-3rd and 5th-6th November 2012 (Back in business)

Posted by on November 14th 2012 in Astrostuff, Observing Reports
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Having brought the observatory back to full operational status after replacing the roof that was trashed by the hailstorm, I thought I'd better get out there and actually use it. I managed a couple of sessions of observing during a run of four clear nights, and used them for some experimentation and equipment tests. I'd fitted a better focuser to the 6" R-C, the new one's a monorail or linear-bearing focuser, it has much better stability than the original Crayford which means less flexing of the optical train under the weight of the coolbox-clad camera. This in turn means better auto-guiding and hence a much-reduced tendency for stars to appear elongated.

Anyway, less of the techy stuff. Visual targets were the Moon and Jupiter, both were putting on a fine display in the clear skies. Imaging-wise I managed to bag a couple more Messier Objects - M47 and M76. Both presented problems - M47 was so low that for some of the time I was imaging through the topmost branches of a tree that belongs to a neighbour three gardens away; and M67 is such a dim and small thing that I didn't take enough pics to capture all of the detail, so I'll have to gather some additional subs sometime soon. Pics and details as follows:

M47 (aka NGC2422), an open cluster in the constellation Puppis.
Subs: 18 light @ 300s, darks and bias frames, ISO800.
1000D on the 6" R-C, guided with PHD.

M76 (aka NGC650/651, The Little Dumbbell Nebula), a planetary nebula in the constellation Perseus.
Subs: 18 light @ 300s, darks and bias frames, ISO800.
1000D on the 6" R-C, guided with PHD.

As above, cropped and enhanced.

Observing Report 26th July 2012 (Sunspots)

Posted by on July 27th 2012 in Astrostuff, Observing Reports, Pics
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Managed to get a few sunspot shots during a short break from trimming the hedges yesterday.

I used a less-dense solar filter (ND 3.8 as opposed to the ND 5.0 that I've used before) which lets through more light allowing much shorter exposures in order to "freeze" the seeing. I also had a play with various magnifications - 1x (prime focus), 2x (Powermate) and 4x (Powermate + Barlow).

All 50/4000 stacked frames, DMK mono CCD camera on the C80ED-R, Baader Planetarium AstroSolar™ Safety Film (ND 3.8) with #58 Green and IR-cut filters.

There's a reference image at the end in case you're wondering what's where:

Active Regions 1528, 1529, 1530 & 1532 (26/07/2012).
1x (prime focus).

Active Regions 1529, 1530 & 1532 (26/07/2012).
2x (Powermate).

Active Region 1532 (26/07/2012).
4x (Powermate + Barlow).

Active Region 1530 (26/07/2012).
4x (Powermate + Barlow).

Active Region 1529 (26/07/2012).
4x (Powermate + Barlow).

Active Region 1528 (26/07/2012).
4x (Powermate + Barlow).

Active Region 1531 (26/07/2012).
4x (Powermate + Barlow).

Active Region 1526 (26/07/2012).
4x (Powermate + Barlow).

Reference image from SOHO.
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