May 2006 Astro Images

The Whirlpool Galaxy
M51 Revisited on 5/3/06

A while back, I shot M51 as the last object of a all-night round of Deep Sky Object imaging. It was late, I was tired, and the worst thing was M51 was already descending into the murk caused by the light pollution from my neighbor's street light combining with a hazy mist that had crept in hugging the horizon before sunrise.

The results were ok back then, but as expected, pretty noisy. On Wednesday, May 3rd, 2006, I setup to image comets but had some time to kill, so I started imaging M51 just to see how it looked riding high and with reasonably steady skies. I was not expecting much because I was just fooling around and I hadn't even done a very good polar alignment yet.

Man, the first exposure was sharp. The guiding was not perfect, but decent. It was only a short exposure, however. So, I increased the length of time and went do something else while a set of 30 exposures started running. I managed to get 22 images in all before checking and finding out that some high misty clouds were taking over the sky. Just my luck, the comet I was after was almost high enough to begin imaging and these clouds just shut me down. But, I still had one set of images for the night, even if they were just done while messing around.

To make a long story short, I took the set and stacked all of them just to see how the final would look. I must of gotten lucky because the image is not half that bad. Some guiding errors that I was able to partially correct is all that was really wrong. Check it out:

M51, The Whirlpool Galaxy on 5/3/06. Taken with a Celestron C-8 at F/6.3 (1260mm.) Guided with a Meade DSI and 100mm F/5 refractor. Camera is a Hutech Type 1 modified Canon 350 XT. Exposure was 22x150 second sub-images at 800 ISO. Processed and stacked in IRIS with dark, flat and bias calibration. Photoshop, RC-Astro's Gradient XTerminator and Noel Carboni's Astronomy Tools for post processing. Neat Image for noise reduction. Click here to see the full size hi-res version.

The Moon on 5/6/06

While testing focus of my scope, I shot the Moon on 5/6/06. The image has been enhanced with sharpening filters to show as many craters as possible. Check it out:

The Moon on 5/6/06. Taken with a Celestron C-8 at F/6.3 (1260mm.) Exposure was 1/200th second at 100 ISO. Processed in IRIS, then exported to Photoshop for final processing.

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Comet 73P-B/Schwassmann-Wachmann on 5/12/06

I was clouded out for the flyby of the Ring Nebula by Comet 73P-C on 5/7/06. I had to wait until 5/12/06 for it to clear up again. By this time, the fragment that was the brightest was no longer the "C" component. The little "B" fragment had flared up and was now 2 times brighter than it's bigger brother!

I woke up early on 5/12/06 and and ignored the "bigger" fragment and concentrated on the smaller one before the onset of twilight shut me down. An animation of all the images I took can be seen here.

Comet 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann, component B on 5/12/06, 10:00 UT. Taken with a Celestron C-8 at F/6.3 (1260mm.) Guided on the stars with a Meade DSI and 100mm F/5 refractor. Camera is a Hutech Type 1 modified Canon 350 XT. First photo is an exposure of 1x30 second at 1600 ISO. Converted from raw format with Canon Digital Photo Pro. The second image is 22x30 at 1600 ISO. Processed and stacked in IRIS with offset, dark and flat calibration. Photoshop, RC-Astro's Gradient XTerminator and Noel Carboni's Astronomy Tools for post processing of both images. Neat Image for noise reduction. Click here to see the full size hi-res version.

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M101 Galaxy on 5/12/06

A nearly full moon on the night of May 12th, 2006 did not stop me from imaging. In the past, I would not try to take pictures because of the glare from the moon. But, I was determined to get a good polar alignment on this night so I could get good images of Comet 73P-B the next morning. After achieving the best alignment I could, I wanted to test it. So, I choose a very dim galaxy, even though the moon was glaring off to the southwest.

My test object, M101 near the end of the handle of the Big Dipper, did not come out too bad, despite the moon. Check it out:

M101 on 5/12/06. Taken with a Celestron C-8 at F/6.3 (1260mm.) Guided with a Meade DSI and 100mm F/5 refractor. Camera is a Hutech Type 1 modified Canon 350 XT. Exposure was 27x90 second sub-images at 800 ISO. Processed and stacked in IRIS with dark, flat and bias calibration. Photoshop, RC-Astro's Gradient XTerminator and Noel Carboni's Astronomy Tools for post processing. Neat Image for noise reduction. Click here to see the full size hi-res version.

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Comet 73P-B/Schwassmann-Wachmann on 5/13/06

The best image I've taken so far of Comet 73P-B has to be the one I have below. This time, I got my telescope to track the comet instead of tracking the stars, so the comet is much sharper in this image than in others I've already done.

Comet 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann, component B on 5/13/06, 8:45 UT. Taken with a Celestron C-8 at F/6.3 (1260mm.) Guided on the comet with a Meade DSI and 100mm F/5 refractor. Camera is a Hutech Type 1 modified Canon 350 XT. Exposure was 28x30 seconds at 1600 ISO. Processed and stacked in IRIS with dark, flat and bias calibration. Photoshop, RC-Astro's Gradient XTerminator and Noel Carboni's Astronomy Tools for post processing. Neat Image for noise reduction. Click here to see the full size hi-res version.

UPDATE 5/16/06: Comet 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann, component B on 5/13/06, 8:45 UT with a possible subfragment flying along with it.

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M13 Globular Cluster on 5/13/06

Ok, what am I doing imaging on a full moon night? Getting half-decent images, that's what! I surprised myself with how well the above picture (M101) turned out, so I wanted to try again and see if I could get lucky a second time.

M13 was my target this night. I had everything going for me. The seeing was excellent, the transparency was very good, and M13 was in good position. Besides the moonlight conspiring against me, one other factor had a negative effect on the final image - poor guiding.

Yep, for some reason I could not get the scope to deliver consistent guiding. So, despite that, I took all the sub-images and stacked them in IRIS with an adaptive method. That evened out some of the guiding errors and made the image pattern itself after the first image in the stack, which I made sure was the best of the bunch. Below is the result:

M13 on 5/13/06. Taken with a Celestron C-8 at F/6.3 (1260mm.) Guided with a Meade DSI and 100mm F/5 refractor with a 2X Barlow. Camera is a Hutech Type 1 modified Canon 350 XT. Exposure was 36x90 second sub-images at 800 ISO. Processed and stacked in IRIS with dark, flat and bias calibration. Photoshop, RC-Astro's Gradient XTerminator and Noel Carboni's Astronomy Tools for post processing. Neat Image for noise reduction. Click here to see the full size hi-res version.

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Jupiter on 5/14/06

Good seeing is a term we use to describe the quality of views or images done when the atmosphere is very steady. If the stars are twinkling, the air between you and the star is turbulent. When the stars are not twinkling much, the air is steady and the "seeing" quality goes up.

Below are two images of Jupiter done when the seeing was above average to excellent. I caught a moon in the act of transiting across the face of the planet. You can see a shadow of the moon on the second image.

Jupiter on 5/14/06. Celestron C-8, Ultima 2X Barlow and a Toucam Pro 740k webcam mounted via a Meade Flip Mirror system. Both images are with the Toucam Pro in "RAW" mode. About 507 frames out of 743 were acquired and stacked in K3CCDTools for each. Photoshop, and Noel Carboni's Astronomy Tools for post processing. Neat Image for noise reduction.

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Comet 73P-B/Schwassmann-Wachmann on 5/17/06

Don't give up on Comet 73/P-B just yet just because it's low in sky amid the moonlight and light pollution! I did not and was rewarded for my efforts with an image of the B fragment sporting a much longer tail than at any other point in this apparition. Compare the image below with the one of the comet further up, which is roughly at the same scale.

Comet 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann, component B on 5/17/06, 10:00 UT. Taken with a Celestron C-8 at F/6.3 (1260mm.) Guided on the comet with a Meade DSI and 100mm F/5 refractor. Camera is a Hutech Type 1 modified Canon 350 XT. Exposure was 30x30 seconds at 1600 ISO. Processed and stacked in IRIS with dark, flat and bias calibration. Photoshop, RC-Astro's Gradient XTerminator and Noel Carboni's Astronomy Tools for post processing. Neat Image for noise reduction. Click here to see the full size hi-res version.

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