This is a “quickie” of one of my favorite deep sky objects, taken with my Celestron C8 SCT. Edge-on galaxy NGC 4565 is the best example of the edge-on galaxy class in the sky. I shot this right before sunrise when the object was just high enough to start imaging. It could use more time and I’ll probably add to it (I did on Nov 29, 2014 – an additional 40 minutes of data.) I’m pleased at what I have so far. I haven’t seen it in quite some time and it was nice to image it again.
Edge-on galaxy NGC 891. The “Outer Limits” moniker is from an old 1960’s sci-fi TV show of the same name. An image of the galaxy was featured prominently in the closing credits, along with some other galaxy images, all in black and white.
At the end of October 2014, I was shooting images of some brighter NGC galaxies, but the TV-85 scope I was using just didn’t have enough image scale to do them justice, so I never posted them. Well, my old C8 is still kickin’ and it has over 2.5 times the focal length of the smaller refractor. But, I needed a way to guide it and the 50mm guiding scope arrangement I used once for it was just not good enough.
Here’s a center crop of M33 that I took recently. It didn’t come too bad, all things considered. Notice that there is an asteroid to the right of the nucleus of M33, before that bright star. That is 1503 Kuopio (1938 XD,) a mag 14.3 asteroid that just happened to be in the shot. So, I got two for the price of one for this gig. 🙂
I just had to visit my old friend, NGC 253, just to see how it was doing. A bright moon and only a short window of possible imaging time did not let me get much data, but at least I got to see it again.
An appropriately named object was chosen as an early evening test target on Halloween night, 2014. Mirach is Beta Andromedae and it is a jump off point for finding M31 and M33. Mirach’s Ghost is that small object very near Mirach that looks almost like a reflection glint of the bright star itself. Nope, it is actually NGC 404, a small elliptical galaxy that just happens to lie in the same line of sight.
Here’s 3.3 hrs of data on two NGC objects, 6939 and 6946, that happen to be side-by-side in the sky. Conditions were decent and I was able to get plenty of sub-images.
Here’s one you don’t see too often. A large spiral galaxy that happens to be dimmed by dust in our galaxy. If it were not for that dimming, this object would be one of the brighter DSO’s in the sky. It is still the 3rd largest galaxy visible to us, behind M33 and M31, the Andromeda Galaxy.
Here’s another ISO 6400 test image and I think it came out pretty well. Temps were only in the mid to low 60’s, so noise was an issue. However, the test reveals that with enough sub-images, the noise can be smoothed out. I did notice that there was a remnant pattern noise that I see when guiding was off and tracking in a certain direction. Dithering during guiding would help for that, but I did not set that option during my imaging session. For sure I’ll try that next time.
Recently, I purchased a new monitor (a Dell 22″ LCD) and needed a good background image for it. My M31 data from 2011 had some issues, so I re-worked it a little and rotated it to a landscape orientation instead of the portrait orientation that I had used before. Now, it makes a great background image for that new monitor! 🙂