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Saturday, February 14, 2009

Comet Kushida emerging from the Hyades


Quite a faint comet, but good practice for Lunin in a week or two.
The left frame is 50mm f1.8 for 25s and the right is 300mm f4 80s (both single frames)

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Near and far

Talk about depth of field. you have nearby stars, the Owl Nebula in the middle distance and galaxy M108 quite a few miles further away - and all (more or less) in focus!
Pleased to get this one because the SkyShedPod with a GEM can't see the whole sky. There are always areas out of view and I had to wait for this view.

Saturday, January 31, 2009

Leo 1 (just)

According to Wikipedia - Leo I is a dwarf spheroidal galaxy in Leo. At about 820,000 light years distant, it is a member of the Local Group of galaxies and is thought to be one of the most distant satellites of the MilkyWay. It was discovered in 1950 on plates from the Palomar 48" schmidt camera. It is only 12' N of Regulus which makes it easy to find, impossible (for most) to see and very difficult to image.
I know this is a rough image but I'm just happy to capture it. 4x300s

Friday, January 30, 2009

needs no introduction

As Pete says, It's hard not to get a half decent image of M42. Like all the others it's a work in progress.


deep red


This shows the kind of stuff (The California nebula) which with an H alpha enhanced camera and an Astronomik cls filter you can start to image from bright skies.

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Holiday snap


Just to put some astro content in- here is a pic of Lower Tresmorn farm in Crackington Haven,Cornwall. I used a Zenitar 15mm and combined two exposures.

Tools




In the last year I downsized (apparently they now say rightsized) from a 12" LX200 to a Skywatcher 120ED on an EQ6 goto mount.
This is on a steel pier in a Skyshed Pod dome.
Camera is a Hutech modded EOS350D.
Guide camera is Starlight Express lodestar
"Guidescope" is 300mm f4 telephoto. I also use this for imaging.