This is the second image I have taken with my Atik 16hrc ( which is a great camera for Galaxy work ). I still seem to be struggeling to get the vivid colours you see in other images of M51 but that gives me something to work on over the summer. It may just be washed out due to light polution

Cheers Jon

Well, when I stared out on this hobby I wish some one had told me how frustrating it is!!!!!!! I can’t believe how many cloudy nights we get in the UK, I am sure I have spent more time looking at my telescopes rather than looking through them.

Saying all that I did manage to get out under a clear sky on the 6th of March and had the opportunity to have First Light with my new DFK camera and William Optics 90.  I took around 1500 images at 60 fps which were the stacked and processed in Registax 5.

Hi All

First clear night for ages so got home eairly and set the scope up, I had decided to go for M81 M82 with the MAKNEWT, so 4 star alignment, and M82 popped into the FOV (well, I thought it was M82). After centring the object I thought was M82, I changed the camera orientation to find M81 and after a hour of trying gave up and went for M82 on its own.

I only managed a hours worth of data and the images on the screen did’nt look great so I did’nt bother doing any flats etc, I did stack the images, did a bit of curves and levels and ended up with a object that wasn’t M82

So I thought, I had either discovered a new DSO never before seen by man!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!, or my alignment was off and it’s a completely different DSO and since it couldn’t possibly be my alignment it must be a new DSO . Getting more and more excited I thought that before I ring up the Royal Observertry claiming I had found a new object and explaining to them the name I wanted to give it, I sent a quick email to SteveL to check it with Astrometry.net.

To my disappointment (as you may have guessed allready) it wasn’t a new DSO ……………. So in answer to my question when is M82 not M82………………….

when its NGC2976

Jon

NGC 6992

Another Kelling Hyperstar image!  I really struggled with reducing the stars in this image but I’m happy how it turned out in the end.  I’m hoping to get the rest of the veil later on during the year.

This is another image from the Kelling Heath Star Party I attended at the end of September 2008. The image was taken using my Hyperstar setup, which has the perfect FOV for this object. M31 is however a difficult object to process give the range of brightness between the core and outer edges. I hope to capture some more data on this one, so keep an eye out for updates

OTA: celestron SCT C8 @ f/2 (Hyperstar v3)
Guiding: William Optics 72   DSI pro II   PHD
QHY8   MaximDL, 15×300s
Stacked using: DeepSkyStacker
Processed using PSCS2

Clear Skies

Jon

NGC7000

Well its been a while since I posted, mainly due to the poor weather. That being said I was lucky enough to go to the Kelling Heath star party at the end of September where we had 3 clear nights!!!!
This is the first image I took with my hyperstar set up and I have to say I’m very pleased with it. It was a steep learning curve but with help of my friend Steve L I have achieved some really good results.

Cheers Jon

M101 

This is my second every Deep sky image using the QHY8 CCD camera. OK so its not great, for one the focus is out but after spending an hour try to get perfect focus I kinda gave up! Saying all that it was the first image I processed using darks, flats (taken using my homemade light box) and bias frames so I was quite pleased.

.

OTA: Celestron C-8 @ f10
Guiding: William Optics 72 + DSI proII mono + PHD
RGB Imaging: QHY8 + MaximDL, 8 x 600s
Stacked: DeepSkyStacker
Post Process: PSCS2 + Noel Carboni’s AstroTools