The Western Veil NGC 6960

     I have just had a thought as I sit here typing. How about bringing one of the names of the veil upto modern day times. Known as the witches broom. I will change it to Harry's Nimbus 3000. Good old Harry Potter.

      Not having a modified Canon I have limited sensitivity to the faint nebulosity that the western Veil displays. A revisit for sure with the UHC filter attatched. Last night was certainly the poorest night of the last 4 with a high dew point moisture was dripping from the outside of the dome.
Iso 1600 with 58 minutes of data has at least captured the wave like shape behind the naked eye star 52 Cygni.

M15 and a new toy.

Last nights clear night saw the first test of my new Auto focus system from JMI and HiTech Astro from the very speedy and efficient Rother Valley Optics I called them Weds am and was promised a call back as they were busy completing an order. As promised they called back and was offered excellent advice saving me £70. A promise was made for delivery tomorrow. I have to admit I was holding back a laugh when he said it. Sure enough to his word it arrived the following day via courier. Set up was simple the motor just fits between the locking screw for the focusser and a hood onto the 10-1 focus knob. The control box was pre wired with a cigarette socket plug, lucky for me my now redundant dew system used the same connector and a power supply was hooked up. I downloaded the ASCOM drivers and it was recognised by the laptop instantly. I use both Imagesplus and Maxim for image acquisition and connection to the 2 programmes was simple.
ISo 800 and 1 hour of exposures has captured stars to the core. Maxim DL is now the prefferred programme for stacking. A small DDP stretch and a pretty star spike later has landed me a wonderful result.

http://www.hitecastro.co.uk/
http://www.rothervalleyoptics.co.uk/productsd.php?search=jmi&x=0&y=0

M2

M2 (NGC7089) is one of the largest globular clusters consisting of approximately 150,000 stars located within our galaxy at a distance of approximately 36,000 light years. Estimated to be 13 billion years old, almost as old as time itself. A lovely view at high power resolve the cluster into a swarm of bees. Even with my Megrez 90 I am pleased to resolve nearly all the way to what is a very dense core. Once again Iso 800 works well with the clusters and an hour of 2 minute guided exposures. A fantastic well illuminated wide field has not required a need for flats here.

Lonely among us.

Floating amongst a myriad of stars lost in time for 10 billion years,(a junior in globular standards) M71 will have spent eons watching the birth and growth of our galaxy looking down from it's vantage point outside the disk of the milky way 1200 light years away. To it's left lies the wonderfully coloured g Sagittae a red giant in it's twilight years some 640 times more luminous that our sun and 55 times more massive too.

Stacked in Maxim DL and processed in Photoshop this 1 hour exposure at Iso 800 has had no darks, flats, or Bias frames. A minimal DDP stretch. I find with globulars less is more with the processing. A pleasing result and very happy being being able to resolve stars to the core of M71