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Friday, January 27, 2012

Jelly Monkey and a cluster

Here's a shot with the 200mm lens at f4. It shows cluster M35 with neigbour NGC2158 along with fainter nebulae IC443 The Jellyfish nebula and NGC 2174 the Monkey Head Nebula.. 22x5mins at 800iso.

Saturday, November 26, 2011

Coming shortly

Pete R posted that asteroid Eunomia is about to cross the California Nebula.. Sounds like a good photo op. Here is another interesting event for the 2nd of December (and a day or two before and after).
Its comet P/2006 T1 Levy passing in front of NGC 7331 - Near Stephan's Quintet in Pegasus. The predicted mag for the comet is 9.5 (We'll see) Let's hope for a couple of clear nights

Sunday, July 31, 2011

M81 M82 & neigbours

This image is from the IKI 70mm f6 scope. 20x6min @800iso. It shows M81 and its neighbour M82 - starburst galaxy. Also seen near the top is ngc3077 and at bottom left ngc2976 (a very odd spiral? galaxy.)

Saturday, July 30, 2011

White light solar

With my 8" newt ,Baader 3,5 filter & MKAS DMK21 camera

Sunday, June 5, 2011

North America Nebula

Here's the other shot from Thursday night.10 x 5min exposures.

Saturday, June 4, 2011

The E nebula

This dark nebula Barnard 142/143 is just north west of Altair.
15x5min  at 1600iso on the 70mm apo with darks, flats + bias. I'm sure my image calibration isn't great but I think it's a lot better than with nothing.
I (obviously) expose the lights. I am imaging with the apt software. The free version is great. PHD is working fine now with a 400mm f6.3 telephoto lens. (It's well strapped down so there's no differential flexure.
I go indoors and connect my laptop via Tight VNC using a via mains network system and can view the frames as they appear. Same for the PHD graph.
At the end of the session I put on the lens cap. Start the series of dark frames and then leave the dome & go to bed. I'm using a power pack with an Astronomiser dummy battery pack so there's enough juice to do the work.
Next day I do the flats (using the sky at the moment, but I'm making a (some) lightbox. People say that if you do flats then you must do bias frames so I do. I just do some frames with lenscap on and zero exposure (actually 1/4000s).
I then plug it all into Deep Sky Stacker and see what happens.

Friday, June 3, 2011

Cocoon Nebula IC 5146

18x 5min. darks flats bias frames.
70mm f6 ed