Wednesday 29 February 2012
Double the distance
Thursday 23 February 2012
Galaxies here, there, everywhere
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.
Sunday 12 February 2012
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.
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.
Wednesday 8 February 2012
Runaway Horses
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