Category Archives: Galaxies

Comets, Galaxies, Nebulae

Comet 41P Leaving the M108 and Owl Nebula Area

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Comet 41P on Mar 23, 2017. 40 x 180 sec @ ISO 200, TV-85 at F/5.6, Canon T3.

On the night following the encounter between M108, Comet 41P and the Owl Nebula, the comet was still in the field of view of my setup, so I went back for seconds.   I just couldn’t pass up the opportunity to shoot a comet conjunction again!

I went with 3 minutes sub-images at ISO 200, since the 1 minute ISO 800 subs were too cooked by the LP for my taste.  Unfortunately, the sky was not as transparent as the previous night and that half-stop of underexposure was needed to get around that.  The trade-off was I didn’t get as much of the comet’s coma.   Oh, well.

Also, at that exposure length, the comet’s pseudo-nucleus trailed a bit, since it is moving with respect to the Earth and stars and slowly picking up speed as time goes on, to boot.   It was not enough to notice if I carefully over-exposed it a bit in processing to make it fatter, luckily.  Check the star streaks version, which I did not overexpose, and you can see how far the comet moved in 3 minutes:

Comet 41P on Mar 23, 2017. Star Streaks version.

A Televue TV-85 w/0.8x focal reducer/field flattener, a Canon T3, my laptop running EQMOD, driving my Atlas EQ-G mount and PHD2 Guiding with an Orion StarShoot guider/Orion Ultra-Mini guidescope was some of the equipment used.

 

Comets, Galaxies, Nebulae

Comet 41P Encounters M108 and the Owl Nebula

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Comet 41P, M108 & The Owl Nebula. 92×60 sec @ ISO 800, TV-85 at F/5.6, Canon T3.

It is not uncommon for comets to pass near famous Messier objects or NGC catalog objects and put on a good show.   This comet encounter is special in that there are two famous objects that the comet is having a conjunction with.   One is a relatively bright galaxy called M108.   The other is the Owl Nebula, one of the better planetary nebulae in the skies.

I shot this with the Canon T3 and Televue TV-85 combo.   I used one minute sub-images at ISO 800 and that was about max for the skies I was under.   I’m sure people with darker skies got better results.   However, I think being able to pull anything out of the skies at this location is great.  LP was bad and I had terrible gradients to deal with in post-processing, but I managed.   🙂

I also did a quick star-streaks version that seems to show a longer tail.  Not sure, since there were some dust doughnuts left over from an apparently bad batch of flats I used and I had to clone them out.  These aberrations were in the tail area, so it could be some remnant of that.

Check it out:

Comet 41P on March 22, 2017, 01:06 UT. 92×60 sec @ ISO 800, TV-85 at F/5.6, Canon T3. Star-Streaks version.
Galaxies, Nebulae, Star Clusters

Orion Nebula Up Close with a Toupcam

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The Orion Nebula. 226 x 8 sec, Gain 350, Toupcam Aptina AR0130 Color Cam, Televue TV-85 at F/7.

It was Friday, March 3, 2017 and the weather was iffy for imaging at my dark sky location.  So, I decided to stay in town and try some short-exposure imaging with the Toupcam color planetary/guider cam I have.

I also wanted to try out an adapter I purchased for the Orion Star Shoot so that it can work with the Orion Ultra-Mini, 130mm, F/4.3 guider scope I’ve been using.   This worked better with PHD2 than I thought it would.  It seemed more accurate than the Toupcam with less dropped frames.   In fact, I’ll probably leave this as the permanent guider setup.

For the Toupcam, I used a two inch extension on the TV-85 at F/7, but I still had to let the cam and extension hang halfway out the focuser to even reach focus.   But, it was stable enough to try some simple targets like the Orion Nebula.

I used a software program called SharpCap for acquisition, dark subtraction and  stacking.   It worked well enough for M42,  but it had trouble with stacking dimmer objects like M46, an open cluster with plenty of stars in it.   I used IRIS to stack the individual frames manually for that one.

M46 Open Cluster, 60 x 8 sec, 350 gain, Toupcam AR0130 Color, TV-85 at F/7.

The last two images were tests of a relatively dim galaxies, like NGC 4565 and M64.  I only got 16 frames for NGC 4565, so it is not too special.   But, it shows the galaxy well enough to recognize what it is.   Like the previous image, it was also stacked manually in IRIS.

NGC 4565, 16 x 8 sec, 350 gain, Toupcam AR0130 Color Cam, TV-85 at F/7.

For my M64 dim galaxy test, I accumulated 38 frames @ 8 sec each.  It was also a test of using a video file format called .SER that was designed for astronomical imaging.   It is like a video file.  After I downloaded a SER viewer/player, which also let me export the frames out as TIF format, I was able to bring the data into IRIS and stack.

M64 Black Eyed galaxy. 38×8 sec, 350 gain, AR0130 Color Cam, TV-85 at F/7.
Galaxies, Star Clusters

Markarian’s Galaxy Chain Area with Ultra-Mini Finder

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Markarians Galaxy Chain Area – 30×15 sec, Ultra-Mini finder with AR0130 Toupcam color guider/camera.

Here is another one of those experiments I do.  LoL.  This time it was with a software program called SharpCap.  It can capture images from planetary/guider cameras like the Touptek, ASI or ZWO cameras.   Sharpcap’s claim to fame is the ability to stack the images you take on the fly so that you can almost get a “live-view” like experience.  I thought it was neat and easy to use.

This is only 7.5 minutes worth of exposure, so it is not really that deep.   But, it is interesting to be able to get this much with an under $200 camera and a small finder scope.

I also captured 7 x 15 sec exposures of M13 in a live stack.   Not quite enough data in the stack for good star colors with just 1.75 minutes of exposure , unfortunately.    But, it shows the globular well enough.    Check it out:

M13 Globular. 7×15 sec, Toupcam AR0130 guider/camera, Ultra-mini finder.
Galaxies

NGC 2903 – Very Wide Field

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NGC 2903 on Feb 15, 2017. 38×180 @ ISO 200, TV-85 at F/5.6, Canon T3, Atlas EQ-G w/EQMOD.

I needed to test guiding with exposures of 3 minutes or longer, so I used NGC 2903 since it was in a convenient location.  This size object needs more image scale to show it better, of course.   But, I kind of like the wide view that shows the galaxy and star field in context.

Btw, in this image, north is to the left.  Also, if you noticed, another small galaxy, NGC 2916, is also visible in this image.   It is below and slightly left of NGC 2903 in this view.

Galaxies

M101 Spiral Galaxy in Ursa Major

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M101 on Jan 29, 2017. 23×60 sec @ ISO 800, TV-85 at F/5.6, Canon T3, Atlas EQ-G w/EQMOD.

Here’s one I have not shot in a while.   I was hoping it would come out better, but unfortunately, I lost quite a few of the sub-images to bad guiding.  I was supposed to get 40 or more, but only 23 were good enough to use.

UPDATE:

M101 with more time added. 64×60 @ ISO 400 and 23×60 @ ISO 800 or 87 minutes total.

I was able to shoot this again and get lots more sub-images.   Not too bad considering the light pollution that I had to endure.

Galaxies

M51 Spiral Galaxy Red Zone Image

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M51 on Jan 24, 2017. 40×60 sec @ ISO 400, TV-85 at F/5.6, Canon T3, Atlas EQ-G w/EQMOD.

Another Bortle Red Zone image with a relatively short exposure of 40 minutes in 1 minute subs.   I have another batch of 1 minute subs taken at ISO 800 to add to this, but here is the preliminary image for the time being.

Update:

M51 on Jan 24, 2017. Close-up crop. 40×60 sec @ ISO 400 and 40×60 sec @ ISO 800, TV-85 at F/5.6, Canon T3, Atlas EQ-G w/EQMOD.
M51 Full Frame.

The additional 40×60 sec @ ISO 800 subs-images are added into the mix and the updated full frame image and a close-in crop are above.   🙂

Just for fun, I added the above image with 2 previous images of M51 taken with bigger scopes and the results are below:

M51 Combined Data. C-8, SN-8 and TV-85 scopes with DSI and two Canon Cameras.
Galaxies

The Great Andromeda Galaxy – Combined Data

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The Great Andromeda Galaxy. 3-panel mosaic taken with a SN-8 and data taken with TV-85 combined.

Data from a 3 panel mosaic taken with a Meade SN-8 telescope back in 2007 was combined with data taken with a Televue TV-85 from 2011.  I used Registar and was able to match the data to the base image, which was the 3-panel mosaic.

I like the way it came out and the orientation is in the classic style for M31.   Thinking about it further, it might be a good project for me to get even more data and add in everything together to get one deep image.    Hmmm…

Galaxies

M81 and M82 Galaxies Reloaded

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M81 & M82 Galaxies. Combined data from 3 imaging sessions.
M81 & M82 Galaxies. Combined data from 3 imaging sessions.  350XT as the base image.
M81 and M82 Galaxies. Combined data from 3 imaging sessions. T3 as the base image.
M81 and M82 Galaxies. Combined data from 3 imaging sessions. T3 as the base image.

I was playing around and noticed I had three different images of this area.  Two were taken with the same scope (a Televue TV-85,) but with two different cameras (a Canon 350XT and a Canon T3, both modified.)  One was with my Meade SN8 and the Canon 350XT.

With Registar, I was able to align and combine the three images.  I used two base images, one with the 350XT as the base and one with the T3 as the base.    So, Registar scaled the T3 image down to the resolution of the 350XT in the first image, but scaled the data up in the two older camera images for the second image.   I tend to like the larger scale second image more, but the scaled data is softer and not quite as sharp as the down scaled data.

The background in both is still a little noisy, but I think it is tame enough to post.  There were lots of faint background galaxies in the full frames, but the one in this view that matters is that smudge just above M81, which is the galaxy on the left.  That dim smudge is Holmberg IX, a dwarf satellite galaxy of M81.  It is considered a good test of your data, since it is so dim and can be easily swamped by noise and not be seen.

The data I used is from Feb 2007,  24×360 sec @ ISO 1600, SN-8, Canon 350XT,  Feb 2008, 41×180 sec @ ISO 1600, TV-85, Canon 350XT and Feb 2012, 39×240 sec @ ISO 1600, TV-85, Canon T3.  Total integration of  7.05 hours

Galaxies

M63 Spiral Galaxy Makeover

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M63 Spiral Galaxy. 35x180 sec @ ISO 800, Meade SN-8 at F/4, Huteck Canon 350XT.
M63 Spiral Galaxy. 35×180 sec @ ISO 800, Meade SN-8 at F/4, Hutech Canon 350XT.

Here is a makeover of M63 from data taken in 2007.   I boosted the color saturation and decreased the star brightness slightly.   Plus, I worked on the star-shapes to get them more round.   This was pretty decent data for ISO 800 and 35 subs.