Double the distance

In this image nestling in the maidens arms lie about a dozen galaxies. Starting with M90 upper left. The huge elliptical M89 to its right and lower down right centre The stunning M58 all lying between 50 to 68 million light years away that's about double what the previous image of  M95. I think I am going to need a new set of dark frames. I seem to have things right at the moment and was able to grab 5 minute autoguided exposures at Iso 800.

Galaxies here, there, everywhere

This is a lovely image of 2 hours 44 Minutes Iso 1600 in 2 minute subs, autoguided and  dark subtracted,  Near perfect focus on a myriad of M's, NGC's and IC's.  You will of course recognise M95 a beautiful barred spiral 38 million light years away. the Brighter M96 a mere 31 Million LY's. M105 the giant eleptical now known to have a super massive black hole in it's belly. A multitude of other Ngc's and a few IC's, all collectivly known as a member of the Virgo super cluster.

Comet 2009 P1 Garradd

I had a great night Saturday night. Typical thought just had a week off for half term. and I have to return to work on Sunday so It's up at 6.00 ish. I finally rolled closed the roof at 02.30 and into bed by 02.45. I found it difficult to sleep as all I could see was the lovely comet Garradd. I swear I could almost see it moving in the eyepiece. It certainly did move over a period of an hour. I used Deep Sky Stacker to stack comet and stars. So there is a bit of noise present. None the less I just love the 2 tails. It was almost 3D looking at it through a 25mm 2" eyepiece on the 90mm refractor. So a stack of about 47 Minutes Iso1600. No dark calibration. Just a ddp stretch and a colour boost.

80 Million Light years away.

My first night outside in nearly a month. Keeping an eye on the forecast, looked like Norwich would cloud over around midnight. I wanted a galaxy group in Virgo that were still low on the horizon unfortunatly they would be up too late to get a couple of hours worth of photons. So I spun the mouse over stellarium and it settled near a couple of little round hoops in Leo. A quick goto and I had settled upon a trio of fuzzies. Beyond reach optically on my 90mm refractor, but a minute test image at 3200 Iso revealed a mist in the centre of the frame. I set up a run of 2 minute guided exposures and returned inside. -10 in the garden was a little to harsh to want to stay outside.

This just over 1degree image shows you a galactic trio of NGC2964(Upper right), NGC2968(centre) and NGC 2970 (Lower Left) with an interval of 6 arc minutes at the northern part of Leo's head. A righthand spiral is NGC2964, has a long axis of about 3 arc minutes and 12th magnitude in brightness at a distance of 72 Million Light Years. And to its left is the irregular galaxy of NGC2968. You can just make out the eliptical galaxy to its left again Mag 14.5 NGC 2970 Both galaxies are about 80 millions light years away and have interacted in the distant past.

Runaway Horses

I remembered I had about 35 minutes worth of data from the UHC filter. I have combined them to the original hour, I think the improvement is noticable.