Bob Trevan
IC410
31Jan2010
Despite a full Moon last night I was able to image IC410 by using a narrowband Ha filter. The ambient temp in the dome was -4c which allowed me to push the camera down to -40c, but this unfortunately resulted in some bizarre artifact around the edges of the image which our 'Imaging guru' John M quickly confirmed as frosting in the CCD chamber, so I warmed :-) the camera up to -35c and the frosting went away after about 15 minutes. I was then able to find a suitable guide star and tracked IC410 until it disappeared behind my neighbours trees some 3 hrs later. The mount was performing extremely well and even with an 8 second guide exposure the tracking error graph was as flat as I've ever seen it.
Dusty emission nebula IC 410 lies about 12,000 light-years away in the northern constellation Auriga. The cloud of glowing gas is over 100 light-years across, sculpted by stellar winds and radiation from embedded open star cluster NGC 1893.
Formed in the interstellar cloud a mere 4 million years ago, bright cluster stars are seen by the prominent dark dust cloud near picture centre.
Notable are two relatively dense streamers of material trailing away from the nebula's central regions. Potentially sites of ongoing star formation, these cosmic tadpole shapes are about 10 light-years long.
Location: Hook
Date: 30 January 2010 20:34:13 GMT (start)
Subject: IC410
Right Ascension 05h 22m 39.3s
Declination +33° 31′ 1″
Distance 12000 ly
Constellation: Auriga
Telescope: Takahashi FS-152
Mount: Takahashi EM-500 (auto-guided)
Mount Control: FS-2 and 'The Sky 6'
Camera: SBIG ST2000XM
Filter: Schuler - H-Alpha
Camera Control: MaxIm DL
Image processing: CCDStack, IRIS and Photoshop
Camera Temp: -35c
Exposure: 37 x 5 minutes
Calibration: Dark and Flat frames applied
Location: Hook
IC410
31Jan2010
Despite a full Moon last night I was able to image IC410 by using a narrowband Ha filter. The ambient temp in the dome was -4c which allowed me to push the camera down to -40c, but this unfortunately resulted in some bizarre artifact around the edges of the image which our 'Imaging guru' John M quickly confirmed as frosting in the CCD chamber, so I warmed :-) the camera up to -35c and the frosting went away after about 15 minutes. I was then able to find a suitable guide star and tracked IC410 until it disappeared behind my neighbours trees some 3 hrs later. The mount was performing extremely well and even with an 8 second guide exposure the tracking error graph was as flat as I've ever seen it.
Dusty emission nebula IC 410 lies about 12,000 light-years away in the northern constellation Auriga. The cloud of glowing gas is over 100 light-years across, sculpted by stellar winds and radiation from embedded open star cluster NGC 1893.
Formed in the interstellar cloud a mere 4 million years ago, bright cluster stars are seen by the prominent dark dust cloud near picture centre.
Notable are two relatively dense streamers of material trailing away from the nebula's central regions. Potentially sites of ongoing star formation, these cosmic tadpole shapes are about 10 light-years long.
Location: Hook
Date: 30 January 2010 20:34:13 GMT (start)
Subject: IC410
Right Ascension 05h 22m 39.3s
Declination +33° 31′ 1″
Distance 12000 ly
Constellation: Auriga
Telescope: Takahashi FS-152
Mount: Takahashi EM-500 (auto-guided)
Mount Control: FS-2 and 'The Sky 6'
Camera: SBIG ST2000XM
Filter: Schuler - H-Alpha
Camera Control: MaxIm DL
Image processing: CCDStack, IRIS and Photoshop
Camera Temp: -35c
Exposure: 37 x 5 minutes
Calibration: Dark and Flat frames applied
Location: Hook