View allAll Photos Tagged messierobjects
Messier 13 / M13 / NGC 6205 / The Great Globular Cluster in Hercules
NGC 6207
The Great Hercules Cluster is the brightest globular cluster in the northern sky and it contains about 300,000 stars. It is about 22,000 light-years away, orbiting the Milky Way, and it is estimated to be 11.65 billion years old. M13 is often compared to M3, another bright northern cluster: flic.kr/p/2kdWmeC
NGC 6207 is an edge-on spiral galaxy about 30 million light-years away. It is visible towards the lower left of M13.
Total integration: 15 hours 24 minutes (924 minutes)
04/02/20: 101 x 120 seconds ISO200
04/03/20: 129 x 120 seconds ISO200
04/09/20: 50 x 120 seconds ISO200
04/22/20: 66 x 120 seconds ISO200
05/02/20: 96 x 120 seconds ISO200
05/04/20: 6 x 120 seconds ISO200
05/12/20: 14 x 120 seconds ISO200
Location: Coral Springs, FL
SQM: 18.18 mag/arcsec^2 (Bortle 8/9)
Camera: Canon T3i (stock/unmodified)
Average camera temperature: 95 F (35 C)
Telescope: Explore Scientific ED80 f/6.0 Apochromatic Refractor (with ES field flattener)
Mount: Orion Sirius EQ-G
Guide scope: Svbony 50mm f/4.0 Guide Scope
Guide camera: Orion StarShoot AutoGuider
Software: N.I.N.A. with PlateSolve2 and PHD2
Pre-processed with PixInsight, processed with PixInsight and Paint.NET
NGC 2024 / Sh2-277 / The Flame Nebula
IC 434
Barnard 33 / The Horsehead Nebula
Alnitak (very bright star, left of center) is a triple star system about 1260 light-years away. Its primary star is a blue supergiant 30 times the mass of the Sun. This star system ionizes the hydrogen gas of the Flame Nebula, 1350 light-years away. To the right of the Flame is the famous Horsehead Nebula, about 1400 light-years away. Behind it, the gas cloud IC 434 is ionized by Sigma Orionis (bright star, top), a star system that is actually the center of a young cluster.
Total integration: 14 hours 44 minutes (884 minutes)
01/25/19: 93 x 60 seconds ISO800
01/26/19: 93 x 60 seconds ISO800
01/27/19: 89 x 60 seconds ISO800
01/31/19: 113 x 60 seconds ISO800
02/10/19: 154 x 60 seconds ISO800
02/25/19: 169 x 60 seconds ISO800
02/26/19: 173 x 60 seconds ISO800
Location: Charlottesville, VA
SQM: 19.22 mag/arcsec^2 (Bortle 6)
Camera: Canon T3i (stock/unmodified)
Average camera temperature: 73 F (23 C)
Telescope: Explore Scientific ED80 f/6.0 Apochromatic Refractor (with ES field flattener)
Mount: Orion Sirius EQ-G (unguided)
Pre-processed with PixInsight, processed with PixInsight and Paint.NET
On the nights of August 11th and 12th, I setup my Canon T1i on my LXD75 mount to track the sky with a laptop to continuously shoot 30 or 60 second exposures of a patch of sky including part of the constellation of Perseus.
I was hoping to catch several shooting stars to stack into one photo that would show how they radiate from Perseus.
On the first night I saw only 1 shooting star and caught none on camera. On the second night (peak night) In 3 hours I saw just 14 including one fireball that left a trail for 10 seconds or so. I caught 2 on camera. This photo shows the two shooting stars stacked into one photo.
I used a 2" Antares light pollution filter on my standard 18-55mm lens, using some tape to hold it in place. It definitely helped but there is a lot of purple noise or sky glow around the edge of each exposure.
In total i took over 500 exposures. About half were lost from dew collecting on the lens at times when it operated unattended (I left it running and went to bed). I may try stacking the better exposures as a wide shot of the sky.
Hopefully I'll have better luck next year or during the Leonids. I wish I had the camera back in 2001 when I counted over 1000 shooting stars in the Leonid Meteor Storm!
18mm, F4.5, ISO 1600. 2x 30 second exposures stacked in Deep Sky Stacker
Messier 45 (Pleiades) - open star cluster. Cut out from DSS2 processed by WikiSky.
Full resolution (7,168 × 6,160 pixels) available at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:M45_DSS2_WikiSky.jpg
M13 as seen in Menlo Park.
This is a collection of two nights of data taken with the Mak. I started with a stack of 50 lights and let DSS select the best 80% - leaving 40 lights to use. Was using the Pentax K10D with the cooler set to -10C - giving CCD temps of 15-16C. Ambient temps these evenings were about 15C so this effort neutralized the camera heat. Also, it was cool and damp enough to cause concerns for dew, so I used the dew heater at the lowest setting. Interestingly, this seems to help with the focus shift due to temperature.
I looked deeply at the darks that I'd captured earlier in the week and realized that they were also flawed with light leaks. Back to the drawing board for those files. Also, I looked at my efforts of using cold darks for bias to try to eliminate the amp glow. That's not so great, either, so I'm using my old bias files as well. Using these two major changes to the stacking set gave much smoother, lower noise back grounds.
It also helps that I'm dealing with an object that is mostly point source rather than extended, just the kind of target that the Mak will excel on with the high f ratio.
Once I brought the file into PI, I ran DBE, ACDNR (which gave some surprising results), masked stretch, curves, and a histogram stretch. I'd have liked to do more to drive the noise floor lower, but I think that most of what's remaining is because of the local light pollution.
Tracking for the night was problematic. I had the mount set to use .8x guide rate and I believe that this made it hard for Maxim to guide without oscillation. Thus, all the stars are elongated by about 1 pixel. Now that I think about it, I probably should have run that step to compact it a little. Drift was still not perfect - polar alignment is within 30arc seconds of true north.
I'm still testing, but so far this seems to work well. More trials are coming. I'm finding light leaks and stopping them when I can. I'm also working on the power budget. Letting everything run with the dew heaters, camera power, cooler, etc until sunup uses about 40-50 Amp Hours. This is 50-60% of the capacity of my battery and I don't like draining it that much. Recharge times take too long and I can't sustain that kind of dependence on daily recharges while at GSSP.
Here's the image resolving data from PI:
Image Plate Solver script version 1.51
============================
Referentiation Matrix (Gnomonic projection = Matrix * Coords[x,y]):
+0.000006205388 -0.000212175788 +0.245648531490
+0.000212053604 +0.000006270321 -0.408066179228
+0.000000000000 +0.000000000000 +1.000000000000
Resolution ........ 0.764 arcsec/pix
Rotation .......... 91.668 deg
Focal ............. 1458.00 mm
Pixel size ........ 5.40 um
Field of view ..... 48' 5.4" x 30' 53.3"
Image center ...... RA: 16 41 44.354 Dec: +36 25 45.93
Image bounds:
top-left ....... RA: 16 42 57.245 Dec: +36 01 15.52
top-right ...... RA: 16 43 05.027 Dec: +36 49 18.49
bottom-left .... RA: 16 40 24.493 Dec: +36 02 10.01
bottom-right ... RA: 16 40 30.693 Dec: +36 50 13.53
============================
Camera: Nikon D50
Exposure: 104m (25 frames) ISO 800 RGB
Filter: Orion Skyglow Imaging Filter
Focus Method: Prime focus
Telescope Aperature/Focal Length: 203×812mm
Mount: LXD75
Telescope: Meade 8" Schmidt-Newtonian
Guided: Yes - PHD Guiding
Stacked: DeepSkyStacker
Adjustments: cropped/leveled in Photoshop
Location: Flintstone, GA
taken at McDermott Court at MIT.
Camera settings: 70-300mm lens @ 300mm, F/5.6, 2 sec. per frame, 144 frames, ISO 1250. Stacked with dark, flat, and offset frames subtracted.
A rework of the stack taken on June 13-14, 2012. I created more temperature matched darks with the cooled camera. Only set left from the old library is the 14C. If I ever get enough of those to try again, I may revisit this data. At this point, because of the flaws in the lights, I think I'm finished with this target for the season.
Restacked in DSS 3.3.3 beta 47 with best 85% filter applied. This gives 24 lights that are "better" even with the light leaks. Focus is not perfect on several of the lights so that's what I hoped to remove with the 85% setting.
As before, this is a stack of images of the M57 region as taken through an Orion 127mm Maksutov Cassegrain telescope with a full-spectrum modified Pentax K10D camera. The camera is further modified with a peltier device to cool hot spots on the body to help keep thermal noise to a minimum. Baader Moon and Skyglow filter used to control some LP. Lights are 10 minutes at 400 ISO. Guiding done via SSAG on Orion ST80 on Losmandy GM8 mount. Off center position because of slop in the DEC axis.
After stacked, I brought the FIT into PI where I ran deconvolution, then DBE, then 200x iterations of masked stretches, then a few rounds of curves, then ACDNR. Final step of solving and annotating before exporting to LR 3.
Image Plate Solver script version 1.51
==================================================
Referentiation Matrix (Gnomonic projection = Matrix * Coords[x,y]):
+0.000024753523 +0.000225118281 -0.276562916275
-0.000225158051 +0.000024794168 +0.373793262939
+0.000000000000 +0.000000000000 +1.000000000000
Resolution ........ 0.815 arcsec/pix
Rotation .......... -96.275 deg
Focal ............. 1366.01 mm
Pixel size ........ 5.40 um
Field of view ..... 48' 13.0" x 28' 5.4"
Image center ...... RA: 18 53 23.321 Dec: +32 56 18.56
Image bounds:
top-left ....... RA: 18 52 03.895 Dec: +33 18 42.66
top-right ...... RA: 18 52 29.604 Dec: +32 30 47.68
bottom-left .... RA: 18 54 17.557 Dec: +33 21 47.99
bottom-right ... RA: 18 54 42.078 Dec: +32 33 51.34
M108, or the Surfboard galaxy, is located in the constellation Ursa Major approximately 46 million light-years away. It is called the Surfboard galaxy because, when viewed with a telescope, it is seen nearly edge-on with no apparent bulge or pronounced core.
M108 was discovered by Pierre Méchain in 1781 three days after he discovered M97. Charles Messier’s notes state that he observed the galaxy in 1781 but never took an accurate position of it or officially added it to his catalog. M108 was finally added to Messier’s catalog in 1953 by astronomer Owen Gingerich.
There is little evidence of a well-defined spiral pattern in the galaxy, but M108 is classified as a barred spiral galaxy with loosely wound spiral arms. Observations show young star clusters exposed against a mottled and detail-rich background. M108 also contains supershells, which are shells of gas driven by bursts of star formation and resulting supernova explosions. The supershells could also be driven by stellar jets or an infall of gas from outside the galaxy.
At the center of M108 is a supermassive black hole estimated to be 24 million times as massive as the Sun. The Chandra X-ray Observatory discovered multiple X-ray sources in M108, with the brightest X-ray source suspected to be an intermediately sized black hole that is actively accreting material.
M108 is one of the largest and brightest members of the Ursa Major cluster, which is part of the Virgo Supercluster of galaxies. It has a magnitude of 10 and is located just under the bowl of the Big Dipper. M108 can be seen with small telescopes as an elliptical streak of light with a brighter core, while telescopes 8 inches or larger will reveal more detail. The best time to observe M108 is in April, but it can be seen throughout the year for those in the Northern Hemisphere.
Credit: NASA, ESA, and H. Bond (The Pennsylvania State University); Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)
For more information, visit: science.nasa.gov/mission/hubble/science/explore-the-night...
For Hubble's Messier catalog website and information on how to find these objects in the night sky, visit: science.nasa.gov/mission/hubble/science/explore-the-night...
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The Ring Nebula (M57 or NGC 6720) is a planetary nebula 2,300 light-years from Earth and can be found in the northern constellation of Lyra south of the bright star Vega. It was formed when a red giant star expelled its shell of ionized gas into the surrounding interstellar medium, becoming a white dwarf.
50 x 30 second exposures at 3200 ISO plus nine dark frames and eight flat frames. Processed in Deep Sky Stacker and Photoshop CS6.
While adding some data from last night to my data of SN2014J from the previous night, I noticed I captured another galaxy in the frame. It's up in the upper-right hand corner and it's a little hard to see.
Unfortunately, no name or Messier/NGC number exists for this little critter, and according to the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, it's 152 million parsecs from here.
Another Hubble view of the outskirts of Messier 44, captured with its Wide Field Camera 3 instrument, shows a variety of bright stars and many background galaxies. Hubble viewed distant galaxies beyond M44 to measure the amount of ionizing radiation that escapes being absorbed by hydrogen or dust as it travels away from its galaxies.
Credit: NASA, ESA and C. Scarlata (University of Minnesota - Twin Cities); Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)
For more information, visit: science.nasa.gov/mission/hubble/science/explore-the-night...
For Hubble's Messier catalog website and information on how to find these objects in the night sky, visit: science.nasa.gov/mission/hubble/science/explore-the-night...
Taken with a TMB92L, Canon T3i DSLR, and Celestron CG-4 mount. Consists of 25 light and 13 dark frames, each a 45-second exposure at ISO 800, stacked in DeepSkyStacker and processed in Photoshop.
M27 with data from about 4 more nights of testing in June.
Again, 10 minute subs at 400 ISO. Taken in Menlo Park, CA - deep in a red zone.
Total stack was: 51 lights (best 80% out of 64), 144 Darks, 58 Flat Frames, 22 Dark Flats ,199 Offset/bias, 6 groups based on temperatures from 12C to 17C.
Stacked with DSS 3.3.3 beta 47 with 2x drizzle on a custom frame. Processed with PI using DBE, Masked Stretch, and Histograpm stretch. Couldn't get the plate solve to work.
Camera used: Full spectrum modified Pentax K10D cooled with external peltier device, Baader Moon and Skyglow filter used.
Telescope: Orion 127mm Maksutov Cassegrain (f12)
Mount: Losmandy GM8
Given that I was having a lot of challenges with tracking on this set of data, I'm surprised that I got anything good from them. There are still oblong stars, but it's good for now.
Quick and dirty stacking and processing of (40) 30 Sec JPG's. True processing of the RAW images to come.
M27 as seen overnight on June 18, 2012. I continued my efforts to improve my technique for guiding while the telescope is set up in the back yard.
For this evening's experiments, I added an additional counterweight to the system - giving 5 lbs on the string. This has the effect of giving a stronger east bias. I was hoping that this would eliminate the RA drift problems I've seen. It seems to work well - the only real drift is in DEC.
Also, what I did prior to this shot was tighten up the DEC axis. I inserted a single belleville washer on the axis of the worm gear to assist in taking up lateral play. The effect is that DEC is now much tighter without having to bind on the ring gear. The washer will provide a small amount of spring to the system to act as a pre-load for system as well.
What I did not do was limit Maxim to only guiding in one direction in DEC. I've done this with PHD quite a bit but in this case, I was trying to figure out if the Maxim stiction and backlash settings were enough to fix the problem.
This is a stack of 31 lights on this target. Individual lights are 10 minutes at 400 ISO. Captured with a full spectrum mod Pentax K10D camera with the Baader Moon and Skyglow filter. Scope used was the Orion 127mm Maksutov Cassegrain. Guided with Maxim with the SSAG on a ST80 all on a Losmandy GM8. These are all from one night. Meridian flip was at about 2 am time and I let it keep running until I got up in the morning.
Stacked in DSS from a collection of 39 total lights with 85% kept. I did a 2x custom frame. I thought it might show some of the local detail better. Not sure if it worked well. Maybe a drizzle would have been good since there are so many lights.
In PI: DBE, Masked Stretch, a run of curves, and ACDNR used to try to improve the image. There's a lot of brown in the background - mostly because of being in the city. I may have pushed this processing a little bit too far given the heavy local light pollution.
Image Plate Solver script version 1.51
============================
Referentiation Matrix (Gnomonic projection = Matrix * Coords[x,y]):
-0.000022742430 +0.000210832794 -0.115733286451
-0.000210969707 -0.000022616320 +0.220275140133
+0.000000000000 +0.000000000000 +1.000000000000
Resolution ........ 0.764 arcsec/pix
Rotation .......... -83.842 deg
Focal ............. 1458.61 mm
Pixel size ........ 5.40 um
Field of view ..... 24' 47.5" x 16' 38.8"
Image center ...... RA: 19 59 39.826 Dec: +22 43 07.21
Image bounds:
top-left ....... RA: 19 59 09.665 Dec: +22 56 20.02
top-right ...... RA: 19 58 58.245 Dec: +22 31 40.38
bottom-left .... RA: 20 00 21.523 Dec: +22 54 33.36
bottom-right ... RA: 20 00 09.890 Dec: +22 29 54.04
M13 as seen in Menlo Park.
This is a collection of two nights of data taken with the Mak. I started with a stack of 50 lights and let DSS select the best 80% - leaving 40 lights to use. Was using the Pentax K10D with the cooler set to -10C - giving CCD temps of 15-16C. Ambient temps these evenings were about 15C so this effort neutralized the camera heat. Also, it was cool and damp enough to cause concerns for dew, so I used the dew heater at the lowest setting. Interestingly, this seems to help with the focus shift due to temperature.
I looked deeply at the darks that I'd captured earlier in the week and realized that they were also flawed with light leaks. Back to the drawing board for those files. Also, I looked at my efforts of using cold darks for bias to try to eliminate the amp glow. That's not so great, either, so I'm using my old bias files as well. Using these two major changes to the stacking set gave much smoother, lower noise back grounds.
It also helps that I'm dealing with an object that is mostly point source rather than extended, just the kind of target that the Mak will excel on with the high f ratio.
Once I brought the file into PI, I ran DBE, ACDNR (which gave some surprising results), masked stretch, curves, and a histogram stretch. I'd have liked to do more to drive the noise floor lower, but I think that most of what's remaining is because of the local light pollution.
Tracking for the night was problematic. I had the mount set to use .8x guide rate and I believe that this made it hard for Maxim to guide without oscillation. Thus, all the stars are elongated by about 1 pixel. Now that I think about it, I probably should have run that step to compact it a little. Drift was still not perfect - polar alignment is within 30arc seconds of true north.
I'm still testing, but so far this seems to work well. More trials are coming. I'm finding light leaks and stopping them when I can. I'm also working on the power budget. Letting everything run with the dew heaters, camera power, cooler, etc until sunup uses about 40-50 Amp Hours. This is 50-60% of the capacity of my battery and I don't like draining it that much. Recharge times take too long and I can't sustain that kind of dependence on daily recharges while at GSSP.
Here's the image resolving data from PI:
Image Plate Solver script version 1.51
============================
Referentiation Matrix (Gnomonic projection = Matrix * Coords[x,y]):
+0.000006205388 -0.000212175788 +0.245648531490
+0.000212053604 +0.000006270321 -0.408066179228
+0.000000000000 +0.000000000000 +1.000000000000
Resolution ........ 0.764 arcsec/pix
Rotation .......... 91.668 deg
Focal ............. 1458.00 mm
Pixel size ........ 5.40 um
Field of view ..... 48' 5.4" x 30' 53.3"
Image center ...... RA: 16 41 44.354 Dec: +36 25 45.93
Image bounds:
top-left ....... RA: 16 42 57.245 Dec: +36 01 15.52
top-right ...... RA: 16 43 05.027 Dec: +36 49 18.49
bottom-left .... RA: 16 40 24.493 Dec: +36 02 10.01
bottom-right ... RA: 16 40 30.693 Dec: +36 50 13.53
============================
M67 (NGC 2682) is used for calibrating photometry measurements. While this image comes from RGB filters, I did also shoot a bunch of luminance filter data so I can learn the response of my system for measuring magnitudes of stars.
Celestron Edge HD 925 with 0.63x focal reducer for a focal legnth of 1530 mm. Atik 414-EX camera with Optolong filters. Image acquisition with N.I.N.A. 20 60 s exposures in each fliter.
Preprocessing in Nebulosity; stacking, registration, channel combination, photometric color calibration, and deconvolution in PixInsight; final touches in Photoshop.
I'll be running the luminance filter data through AIP4WIN to get better calibrated data for analysis.
This is an uncropped stacked photo of the Andromeda Galaxy. I took 10 photos of 3 minute exposures and then stacked them in DeepSkyStacker. An AstroTrac was used for tracking unguided. This is one of the best tracked photos I've managed to take. I nailed the polar alignment in one go and was amazed that it remained stable even after adjusting the camera and putting on a filter. Yes, the light pollution filter made a big difference if you're wondering.
Hubble peered through the far southwestern edge of open cluster Messier 44 with its Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) instrument to view this teeming collection of stars and background galaxies. Hubble was studying distant galaxies to explore the distribution of their surrounding magnetic fields, which may be elevated from the galaxies by outflowing galactic winds.
Messier 44, also famously known as the Beehive Cluster or Praesepe, swarms with activity as its name would suggest. This open cluster of around 1,000 stars, loosely connected by gravity, is one of the closest to Earth at approximately 600 light-years away. The stars of open clusters form from the same cloud of collapsing gas and the Beehive Cluster is thought to be quite young, around 600-700 million years old. In contrast, its Milky Way home is known to be about 4.6 billion years old.
M44 was first characterized as more than a cloudy nebula by Galileo, who resolved around 40 of the stars within it. Hubble uses its high-resolution vision to focus in on sections of the nearby cluster, capturing detailed views of bright stars mingled with an assortment of background galaxies. In these images, Hubble peered through the outskirts of M44 to explore the workings of galaxies far beyond.
M44 covers the space of about three full moons (or 1.5 degrees) on the sky in the constellation Cancer and is best seen in the Northern Hemisphere’s spring sky, reaching its highest point in March. To the unaided eye, it looks like a blur of light positioned just above where the three branches of the upside-down “Y” of Cancer meet, while a pair of binoculars can resolve around 20 stars. A telescope will reveal scores to hundreds more of the cluster’s collection of mostly blue-white stars. In somewhat light-polluted skies, find it by going to the center of an imaginary line drawn between Regulus in Leo and Pollux in Gemini and looking slightly south and west.
Credit: NASA, ESA, and S. Lilly (Eidgenossiche Technische Hochschule) and DECam/CTIO/NOIRLabProcessing/NSF/AURA; Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)
For more information, visit: science.nasa.gov/mission/hubble/science/explore-the-night...
For Hubble's Messier catalog website and information on how to find these objects in the night sky, visit: science.nasa.gov/mission/hubble/science/explore-the-night...
LATEST VERSION: flic.kr/p/2pUT1Ko
Messier 15 / M15 / NGC 7078 / The Great Pegasus Cluster
The Great Pegasus Cluster is a globular cluster containing over 100,000 stars. It is about 33,000 light-years away, orbiting the Milky Way, and it is estimated to be 12.0 billion years old. It is one of the most densely packed globular clusters known.
Almost 2 years earlier, I attempted this target with a 250mm lens: flic.kr/p/QZiLro
Total integration: 6 hours 34 minutes (394 minutes)
08/08/20: 9 x 120 seconds ISO200
08/09/20: 56 x 120 seconds ISO200
08/10/20: 70 x 120 seconds ISO200
08/16/20: 62 x 120 seconds ISO200
Location: Coral Springs, FL
SQM: 18.18 mag/arcsec^2 (Bortle 8/9)
Camera: Canon T3i (stock/unmodified)
Average camera temperature: 104 F (40 C)
Telescope: Explore Scientific ED80 f/6.0 Apochromatic Refractor (with ES field flattener)
Mount: Orion Sirius EQ-G
Guide scope: Svbony 50mm f/4.0 Guide Scope
Guide camera: Orion StarShoot AutoGuider
Software: N.I.N.A. with PlateSolve2 and PHD2
Pre-processed with PixInsight, processed with PixInsight and Paint.NET
This was taken same night as the previous deep space image. This time it's pointing towards the galactic core. The two bright purple nebulas are the Eagle and Omega nebulas. Eagle nebula is famous for the star forming regions called "pillars of creation" initially captured by the Hubble Space Telescope. This image is too wide at 188mm to see any of those details unfortunately. But it just shows how many stars are out there and how insignificant we are on the grand scale of things..
First light with the Meade LX200. I decided to test it out on its first night - which incidentally was also the day the LX200 fork mount arrived via FedEx!
I am very pleased!
:)
Photographed prime-focus with a Meade LX-5/2080 using no focal reducers/filters, and only a T-ring adapter and adapter tube assembly.
Camera: Nikon D50
Exposure: 33 x 120s ISO 1600 RGB
Filter: Orion Skyglow Imaging Filter
Flattener/Correction: Anteres .63x Focal Reducer
Focus Method: Prime focus
Telescope Aperature/Focal Length: 256×2500mm
Telescope: Meade LX200-GPS 10" ACF
Guided: PHD Guiding
Stacked: DeepSkyStacker
Adjustments: cropped/leveled in Photoshop
Location: Flintstone, GA
Another astro image from Cyprus - this time it's the Lagoon (big purple one) and Triffid (pink/blue) nebulae near the galactic core of Milky Way. When you compare this area with the previous image, you can see how many more stars are present in this region. All the light from the stars makes it difficult to photograph fainter nebulae. After stacking images, I had to filter and reduce the brightness of the stars to bring out the details in the nebulae - this gives the image very grainy/noisy look - especially when viewed in full size.
Taken with 200mm lens - total exposure was about 1 hour.
A rework of the stack taken on June 13-14, 2012. I created more temperature matched darks with the cooled camera. Only set left from the old library is the 14C. If I ever get enough of those to try again, I may revisit this data. At this point, because of the flaws in the lights, I think I'm finished with this target for the season.
Restacked in DSS 3.3.3 beta 47 with best 85% filter applied. This gives 24 lights that are "better" even with the light leaks. Focus is not perfect on several of the lights so that's what I hoped to remove with the 85% setting.
As before, this is a stack of images of the M57 region as taken through an Orion 127mm Maksutov Cassegrain telescope with a full-spectrum modified Pentax K10D camera. The camera is further modified with a peltier device to cool hot spots on the body to help keep thermal noise to a minimum. Baader Moon and Skyglow filter used to control some LP. Lights are 10 minutes at 400 ISO. Guiding done via SSAG on Orion ST80 on Losmandy GM8 mount. Off center position because of slop in the DEC axis.
After stacked, I brought the FIT into PI where I ran deconvolution, then DBE, then 200x iterations of masked stretches, then a few rounds of curves, then ACDNR. Final step of solving and annotating before exporting to LR 3.
Image Plate Solver script version 1.51
==================================================
Referentiation Matrix (Gnomonic projection = Matrix * Coords[x,y]):
+0.000024753523 +0.000225118281 -0.276562916275
-0.000225158051 +0.000024794168 +0.373793262939
+0.000000000000 +0.000000000000 +1.000000000000
Resolution ........ 0.815 arcsec/pix
Rotation .......... -96.275 deg
Focal ............. 1366.01 mm
Pixel size ........ 5.40 um
Field of view ..... 48' 13.0" x 28' 5.4"
Image center ...... RA: 18 53 23.321 Dec: +32 56 18.56
Image bounds:
top-left ....... RA: 18 52 03.895 Dec: +33 18 42.66
top-right ...... RA: 18 52 29.604 Dec: +32 30 47.68
bottom-left .... RA: 18 54 17.557 Dec: +33 21 47.99
bottom-right ... RA: 18 54 42.078 Dec: +32 33 51.34
My guide to the nebulous, fuzzy things I see in the night... in the sky. A catalog compiled by French astronomer Charles Messier in 1771. He was an avid comet hunter, and these objects, always stationary in the constellations, were sometimes confused with comets, so he comprised this list to rule out misidentifying them... most logical... Mister Spock would be proud. I like this mug, whatever I drink from it, coffee, or whatever, or a combination of both, taste out of this world... Ha!
This was to get some practice with RGB imaging with the STXL-6303 in the observatory at Cerritos College.
Telescope: Celestron C14
Mount: CGE Pro
Camera: see above
Filters: Antlia RGB set
Capture program: Maxim DL
It looks like an extensive study on this cluster has revealed a number of variable stars, including some eclipsing binary systems. (See iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2041-8205/746/1/L7 ) This could be a good cluster to follow up with for students to learn how to measure light curves.
Calibration of images in Nebulosity; registration, stacking, channel combination and initial processing in PixInsight; final touches in GIMP.
This is a cropped version of the wide-field photo of the Andromeda Galaxy. Notice the stars are round?!
This is a shot of the globular cluster Messier 13, in Hercules. Taken over two nights in the backyard for testing prior to GSSP 2014.
Was challenged to fix some problems with camera and mount prior to the star party. The mount part was easy - I re routed some cables so that they didn't snag. The camera part was not easy. During waiting fo rthe skies to clear, I ran the camera to capture a series of dark frames. Unfortunately, during these sequences a piece of flocking paper fell down into the camera body and blocked the movement of the shutter. The shutter electronics a dead and now it will not open. I've had to hot glue the shutter open and now rely on the motion of the mirror plus the electronics of the CCD to time the exposures. Biggest follow up to the shutter issue has been taking flats. Because short duration flats allow over exposure as the mirror flaps up and down, long duration flats are better. I'm now recording flats with a duration of .7 seconds vs 1/60 second. I may consider building a strobe box to further experiment.
This image is a sum of 18 exposures at 1200 seconds each at 100 ISO.
Standard setup: Stellarvue SV4, Pentax K10D (modified and cooled - and broken shutter), SSF6 flattener
Filter: IDAS HEUIB II
Mount: Losmandy G11 with Gemini 2
Guiding scope: Stellarvue SV70ED with Orion SSAG
Guiding: Maxim 5.24
Exposure control: Star Labs DSLR Shutter and Pentax tethering software
Calibrated in Maxim with 10 darks, 21 flats, and 260 bias
Stacked in DSS 3.3.3 beta 51
Processed in PixInsight 1.8 with Crop, DBE, Masked Stretch, Histogram Stretch to reset black point, TGVDenoise, masked curves to boost saturation and reduce muddy sky glow, and unsharp mask on bright stars to tighten.
Passed through LR5 for export to web
Here's the platesolve from PI
Referentiation Matrix (Gnomonic projection = Matrix * Coords[x,y]):
-8.66381e-007 -0.000530417 +0.680789
+0.00053032 -9.15332e-007 -1.0261
+0 +0 +1
Projection origin.. [1937.076485 1280.333772]pix -> [RA:+16 41 52.45 Dec:+36 29 51.55]
Resolution ........ 1.909 arcsec/pix
Rotation .......... 89.898 deg
Focal ............. 653.58 mm
Pixel size ........ 6.05 um
Field of view ..... 2d 3' 16.7" x 1d 21' 29.8"
Image center ...... RA: 16 41 52.423 Dec: +36 29 51.40
Image bounds:
top-left ....... RA: 16 45 13.027 Dec: +35 28 07.62
top-right ...... RA: 16 45 17.404 Dec: +37 31 22.18
bottom-left .... RA: 16 38 32.813 Dec: +35 27 59.29
bottom-right ... RA: 16 38 26.431 Dec: +37 31 13.63
Another view of this target - 12 hours of integration using 77 lights of 10 minutes at 400 ISO.
I reworked my original set of data with the addition of a lot of much better darks and more lights with improved tracking. I found that with the high resolution available on this target, I was pushing my mount to its limits with the settings I was using. I've found improved methods of handling tracking and these are the results.
Used PEC at .2 x sideral tracking -- actually closed loop or King tracking seems to offer better results. With normal sideral tracking, the RA was wobbling and thus there was streaking. All along I was thinking that the issue was solely in DEC and so I was concentrating on reducing the error on that axis. Once the RMS on that axis was under .5 arc seconds I was able to see clearly that RA was the source of the rest of the problem. Additionally, I have found that each session must begin with a new upload of the PEC file as the stored one doesn't reproduce properly.
Because of the changes to tracking, the resolution has improved and the core of the cluster is better resolved.
Processed in DSS 3.3.3. beta 47 from a stack of 96 lights over the course of a week from June 19 to June 28 2012.
Since these were taken in a suburban backyard, there's quite a bit of brown skyglow which hinders the display of faint objects.
At this point, I'm going to just test a couple more settings to see if King or closed loop is better for the high magnification and then I'll move on to other targets.
Camera: Meade DSI Color II
Exposure: 29m (15 x 1m) RGB + (14 x 1m)L
Focus Method: Prime focus
Telescope Aperature/Focal Length: 203×812mm
Mount: LXD75
Telescope: Meade 8" Schmidt-Newtonian
Guided: None
Stacked: DeepSkyStacker
Adjustments: cropped/leveled in Photoshop
Location: Flintstone, GA
I captured all 110 of the Messier Objects between March 7 and August 6, 2008 as a Photo Messier Marathon. Note that I've placed M110 in the 0,0 position so that I didn't have to add another row.
Each image was taken using a Meade DSI II Color attached to an LXD75 SN-8 and consists of 15 x 15s images stacked in Envisage and leveled in Photoshop.
Messier 3 / M3 / NGC 5272
Messier 3 is one of the brightest globular clusters in the northern sky and it contains about 500,000 stars. It is about 34,000 light-years away, orbiting the Milky Way, and it is estimated to be 11.39 billion years old. It is often overshadowed by M13, a slightly brighter cluster: flic.kr/p/2kdWMUw
Total integration: 8 hours 48 minutes (528 minutes)
02/17/19: 105 x 60 seconds ISO800 [Bortle 6]
03/17/19: 341 x 60 seconds ISO800 [Bortle 6]
05/02/20: 41 x 120 seconds ISO200 [Bortle 7]
Location: Charlottesville, VA and Coral Springs, FL
SQM: 19.22 mag/arcsec^2 and 18.18 mag/arcsec^2 (Bortle 6 and Bortle 8/9)
Camera: Canon T3i (stock/unmodified)
Average camera temperature: 80 F (27 C)
Telescope: Explore Scientific ED80 f/6.0 Apochromatic Refractor (with ES field flattener)
Mount: Orion Sirius EQ-G
Guide scope: Svbony 50mm f/4.0 Guide Scope
Guide camera: Orion StarShoot AutoGuider
Software: N.I.N.A. with PlateSolve2 and PHD2
Pre-processed with PixInsight, processed with PixInsight and Paint.NET
INSET INFORMATION
The inset shows the image prior to post processing exhibiting a faint artifact at the 2 o'clock position on the core which may be indicative of the source of a plasma jet in M87. This feature is swamped out during post processing.
.......
My Location: In Bortle class 8
Image acquisition details: 51x300s for a total integration time of 4.3 hours
Dates: 7-9 March 2023
Equipment:
Scope: WO Zenith Star 81mm f/6.9 with WO 6AIII flattener/focal reducer x0.8
Cooled camera: ZWO ASI 2600MC Pro at 100 Gain and 50 Offset
Mount: iOptron GEM28-EC mount
Guider: ZWO Off-Axis Guider
Guide camera: ZWO ASI 174MM mini
Focuser: ZWO EAF
Light pollution filter: Chroma LoGlow Broadband - 2"
Software: Pixinsight
.......
"Messier 87 (also known as Virgo A or NGC 4486, generally abbreviated to M87) is a supergiant elliptical galaxy in the constellation Virgo that contains several trillion stars. [...] it has [...] a jet of energetic plasma that originates at the core and extends at least 1,500 parsecs (4,900 light-years), traveling at a relativistic speed."
This is a widefield shot showing the large lagoon nebula, smaller trifid nebula, and much more. The star cluster at the top right is M23. This is a stack of 65 pictures taken with a Takumar 135mm f2.5 lens. All shot at 4 seconds, f2.5, iso 8000.
Camera: Nikon D50
Exposure: 1hr 9m (23 frames) ISO 800 RGB
Filter: Orion Skyglow Imaging Filter
Focus Method: Prime focus
Telescope Aperature/Focal Length: 203×812mm
Mount: LXD75
Telescope: Meade 8" Schmidt-Newtonian
Guided: Yes - PHD Guiding
Stacked: DeepSkyStacker
Adjustments: cropped/leveled in Photoshop
Location: Flintstone, GA
First light with the Meade LX200. I decided to test it out on its first night - which incidentally was also the day the LX200 fork mount arrived via FedEx!
I am very pleased!
:)
Camera: Nikon D50
Exposure: 1hr (15 x 4m) ISO 800 RGB
Filter: Orion Skyglow Imaging Filter
Flattener/Correction: Anteres .63x Focal Reducer
Focus Method: Prime focus
Telescope Aperature/Focal Length: 256×2500mm
Telescope: Meade LX200-GPS 10" ACF
Guided: Yes - PHD Guiding
Stacked: DeepSkyStacker
Adjustments: cropped/leveled in Photoshop
Location: Flintstone, GA