Transit of Mercury 11th November 2019

A low Sun, too much cloud and other closer obstructions hampered imaging, but managed a few cloud free shots.

Equipment
Telescope:              Sky Watcher ED80 DS PRO
Camera:                 Altair Astro GP-CAM3 290M + 0.5x reducer

14:38

15:09

Movie

New target NGC7331

Scope: Sky Watcher ED80 DS Pro
Mount: Celestron Advanced GT mount
Camera: Altair Astro Hypercam 183C
Guide cam: QHY 5L-II-C
Guide software: PHD2

90 x 60s subs
60 x 60s darks
100 flats

The main target of NGC7331 is a little small in this wide angle view, although there is some nice detail. The entire image encompasses 20 individual galaxies.

Same image plate solved to identify the galaxies using 'All Sky Plate Solver'
 http://www.astrogb.com/

Embarking on a new aspect of astronomy - Spectroscopy

I've recently started imaging star spectra. This requires a diffraction grating to be placed in front of the imaging camera and processing software to calibrate the data.

Basic imaging is best done using a mono camera.

The equipment I use:

Telescope:              Sky Watcher ED80 DS PRO
Camera:                 Altair Astro GP-CAM3 290M
Diffraction grating: Paton Hawksley Star Analyser SA100
https://www.patonhawksley.com/product-page/star-analyser

Processing software: RSpec from Field Tested Systems
https://www.fieldtestedsystems.com my thanks to Tom Field for all his assistance getting me this far.

So here is my first analysis of Vega.

This is what the camera sees, the star Vega to the left, the spectrum to the right.

And after processing in RSpec.

The yellow line is professional calibrated reference data for the Vega class A0V star.
The red line is my data after being calibrated and corrected for the camera sensor response.

The dips in the curves indicate where elements in the atmosphere of the star are absorbing light. There is a large dip in my data around 7650 Angstroms that is not matched in the reference data, I believe that's probably due to the Oxygen in the Earth's atmosphere.

ISS transiting the Sun

The ISS transited the Sun at 11:57:48 today.

This short video isn't great, the transit is incredibly fast and I should have used higher magnification. The transit is copied 4 times to lengthen the video and the frame rate reduced from 26 to 4 fps.

Maybe next time!

M106 and surrounds

Inspired by an APOD image from a few days ago, these are my first attempts at M106, the largest galaxy in the image. Two nights of imaging resulting in 1 hour 14 minutes of stacked images.

The sky is light this time of year so contrast is compromised.

In the image are:
M106 (23.68 million light years)
NGC4217 (60 million light years)
NGC4220 (58.4 million light years)
NGC4226 (383 million light years)
NGC4231 (340 million light years)
NGC4232 (340 million light years)
and
NGC4248 (24 million light years)

Scope: Sky Watcher ED80 DS Pro
Mount: Celestron Advanced GT mount
Camera: Altair Astro Hypercam 183C
Guide cam: QHY 5L-II-C
Guide software: PHD2 

37 x 120s exposures.

Same image plate solved to showing the galaxy names

Strange Object Near Arcturus

While setting up and monitoring Arcturus a strange object came into view travelling Right to Left. It took me by surprise so I only videoed the second half of the transit. I've no idea what it can be, but it's about 7 ArcSec diameter travelling at about 68 ArcSec/Sec.

Update 21/05/2019. Almost certainly a balloon of some sort.

Time stamp: 17:39 UTC May 16th 2019

M13 - Great Globular Cluster in Hercules

Scope: Sky Watcher ED80 DS Pro
Mount: Celestron Advanced GT mount
Camera: Altair Astro Hypercam 183C
Guide cam: QHY 5L-II-C
Guide software: PHD2 

Total of 2h 28m exposure

M101 Pinwheel Galaxy

The latest image of M101 taken over 2 nights

Scope: Sky Watcher ED80 DS Pro
Mount: Celestron Advanced GT mount
Camera: Altair Astro Hypercam 183C
Guide cam: QHY 5L-II-C
Guide software: PHD2 

Total of 1h 30m of 2m exposures.

 

Latest Whirlpool Galaxy - M51

The latest image of M51 taken over 4 nights

Scope: Sky Watcher ED80 DS Pro
Mount: Celestron Advanced GT mount
Camera: Altair Astro Hypercam 183C
Guide cam: QHY 5L-II-C
Guide software: PHD2 

Total of 6h 22m exposures comprising:

34 x 3m 28s Lights & Darks
25 x 3m 39s Lights & Darks 
10 x 5m 54s Lights & Darks
10 x 5m 34s Lights & Darks
10 x 5m 49s Lights & Darks 

Stacked in DSS, processed in Photoshop Elements.

Last Orion Nebula for the 2018-19 season

This will be my last image of the Orion Nebula for the 2018-19 season, it's now disappearing behind nearby houses and every night it gets a little further west and the sky gets a little brighter. I decided to concentrate on this one object over a period of 5 nights rather than a single night and it has paid off in getting a much smoother image.

Scope: Sky Watcher ED80 DS Pro
Mount: Sky Watcher CG4 motorised with modified controller for guiding.
Camera: Altair Astro Hypercam 183C
Guide cam: QHY 5L-II-C
Guide software: PHD2 

166 x 2 min plus 41 x 1 min exposures. 

Stacked in DSS and finished in PS Elements.

Pleiades 1962 to 2019

A few weeks ago a friend gave me a book on astronomy published in 1962, in it was an image of the Pleiades. Luckily it was of a similar scale to my images, so as an experiment I overlayed and aligned one of my images with a scan from the book and it shows some stars that have moved in the intervening 57 years.

The alignment isn't perfect but the stars that move do so contra to others nearby so must be real. The image with the spikes on the big star (Alcyone) is from 1962 overlaying my image from 2019 with a 50% transparency. Play it full screen and take a look at the stars at the top, left of centre. Look closely and you'll see others that also seem to have moved.

Latest Pleiades

The latest image of the Pleiades. There's a bit more detail and colour graduation in the nebulosity than in previous images.

Scope: Sky Watcher ED80 DS Pro
Mount: Sky Watcher CG4 motorised with modified controller for guiding.
Camera: Altair Astro Hypercam 183C
Guide cam: QHY 5L-II-C
Guide software: PHD2

25 x 5min Light
24 x 5 Min Dark 
24 Flats

Stacked in DSS, processed in Photoshop Elements and GIMP.

M78 - Diffuse Nebula

First attempt at this object, or rather a collection of ojects, M78 (Brightest part), NGC2071, NGC2067, NGC2064 and McNeil's Nebula.

Scope: Sky Watcher ED80 DS Pro
Mount: Sky Watcher CG4 motorised with modified controller for guiding.
Camera: Altair Astro Hypercam 183C
Guide cam: QHY 5L-II-C
Guide software: PHD2

22 x 5min Light
22 x 5 Min Dark 
22 Flats

Stacked in DSS, processed in Photoshop Elements and GIMP.

Not a great image, it would benefit from more subs.

Latest Flame and Horsehead

A new image of the Flame and Horsehead in Orion

Scope: Sky Watcher ED80 DS Pro
Mount: Sky Watcher CG4 motorised with modified controller for guiding.
Camera: Altair Astro Hypercam 183C
Guide cam: QHY 5L-II-C
Guide software: PHD2

24 x 5min Light
24 x 5 Min Dark 
24 Flats

Stacked in DSS, processed in Photoshop Elements, GIMP and Photoshop Express for iPad.

A windy night but PHD2 did a great job keeping the image stable with not a single lost sub.

Lunar Eclipse 21/01/2019

With considerable cloud cover seeing wasn't great. As the onset of totality arrived the skies clearded for a short time.

Camera: Pentax K-S2
Lens: Tamron: LD DI 70-300mm zoom, set at 300mm, F4
ISO: 1600
Exposure 2"

Just before totality

About mid point of totality

Rings around the Moon

Taken with the Pentax K-S2
10" @ ISO400

At the bottom of the frame is part of Orion, and above to the right of the moon is the Pleiades.

Orion Nebula

First time imaging the Orion Nebula with 10 minutes subs.

The stacked image had the central bright region totally over exposed with no detail visible, so I blended an image taken with shorter subs to create this final image. 

Scope: Sky Watcher ED80 DS Pro
Mount: Sky Watcher CG4 motorised with modified controller for guiding.
Camera: Altair Astro Hypercam 183C
Guide cam: QHY 5L-II-C

12 x 10min Light
6 x 10 Min Dark
12 x Flat
12 x Bias

Stacked with DSS, finished with Photoshop Elements and GIMP.

Two recent images

Testing autoguiding my small CG-4 mount with modified controller.

Both images:
6 x 10 min lights
6 x 10 min darks

2019 01 04 - Plieades

2019 01 04 - Flame and Horse Head nebulas

Comet 46P-Wirtanen

Stacked from 30 sub-frames of 2mins each

and a short video built from the same set of sub-frames