Our Observatory is CLOSED tonight
Cigar Galaxy – 90secs single frame captured with the Alan Young telescope
Bode’s Galaxy – 90secs single frame captured with the Alan Young telescope
These are single frame images captured with the Alan Young Telescope on 15 January 2016
WhirlpoolGalaxy, M51
Lovely image of M51 captured by CADSAS member Simon Powell. It’s from 60 images at various ISO and exposure times, but nothing over 2 minutes.
Image of IC443 by Graham Caller
Another excellent image by our member Graham Caller. This time it’s IC443 also called the Jellyfish Nebula. It’s a supernova remnant in the constellation of Gemini.
Click the thumbnail image above for a larger version, though note that this has been reduced in resolution for the web. The original is even more impressive.
Graham comments:
Last week was IC443 week. A couple of clear nights and I grabbed 8 hours worth of 15mins subs. Topped up this week with another 2.5 hours to improve the signal to noise ratio further.
Resultant image stacked in PixInsight and processed.Oh! this was taken using an Ha filter.
We are hoping Graham will give us a lecture in the future, on his astroimaging techniques.
Here is a collection of astronomical images captured by our member Simon Powell. (click each thumbnail for a larger version of the image)
All were taken using a Skywatcher 200PDS telescope on an HEQ5 Equatorial mount, with a Canon 70D DSLR at prime focus. The deep sky shots were stacked in Deep Sky Stacker with darks, bios shots and flats. Post processing was done with Photoshop.
Simon comments..
“Most of these were taken from central Maidstone, so light pollution is an issue, hence the Dumbell and Cigar have a lot of noise in the image. Now I’ve moved to Biddenden I’m hoping not to have that issue again!”
We welcome Simon to our area and our astronomical society!
M31 Andromeda Galaxy, Canon 1000D, ED80, DSS, Kevin Brown
Here is another go by Kevin Brown at M31, the Andromeda Galaxy. This time using sub-images captured in Canon 1000D RAW format.
This resulting image is made from 5 lights plus 1 dark, each of 180s exposure at 1600 ISO, stacked using Deep Sky Stacker software.
The settings used with DSS were rather random (more experience needed), so a better final result is probably possible…
Sun Image 7/7/14 by Graham Caller (click for larger)
Image of the Sun captured on 7th July 2014 by our member Graham Caller. Comprising 80 frames at 1/4000 sec exposure, stacked in Registax software.
Albireo imaged with Alan Young Telescope 06062014 (click for larger version)
An image of double star Albireo in constellation Cygnus, imaged with the Alan Young Telescope.
Albireo consists of an orange giant of magnitude 3, together with the blue/green magnitude 5 companion.
It is good to see that our work on improving the Alan Young Telescope is now producing results, in the form of better quality astro-images.
M51 Whirlpool Galaxy by Graham Caller
Another lovely astroimage from member Graham Caller. This is the interacting galaxies which make up M51, the “Whirlpool Galaxy” (as first listed by Charles Messier).
M51A and the smaller object M51B are interacting. You can even see this galaxy combination with decent binoculars (but not quite as clearly as in this image!).
Graham comments:
“One M51 finished image attached.
Out of 18 images I got 10 usable that didn’t have noticable trailing. I suspect the defective shots were the result of periodic error in the mount tracking.
The 10 images stacked had flats and bias frames added but no darks as I haven’t taken 5 mins exposure darks before. That’s something to do on the cold and cloudy nights which we have no shortage of 🙂 “
