By Jove

My imaging set up is not designed for planetary imaging. But I couldnt resist having a go at the true king of the planets Jupiter. Taken with my 90mm refractor with the DSLR attatched to a 2 x barlow using 5 x live view magnification and video recording a stack of 500 frames aligned and stacked in registax. Wavelet sharpening and thats it. By no means an image of quality compared to some of the dedicated planetary imagers out there. I might have a go with our societies planetary imager on the 20". I will post the resulting image when it happens.

California nebula

As promised I have had another go at the huge NGC1499. I sometimes wonder how something as huge as this never made the messier catalogue.
I have managed and hour and a half this time and think I have a much smoother result.

45 x 2 minute guided exposures at ISO 1600. No darks , flats or bias frames added , subtracted or divided. I just love the new JMI focusser. so simple and quick to auto focus. I have had a long day at work today. Just can't think of anything else to add. Goodnight all....

CHIPS

I am sure many people will remember the American tv programme CHIPS. Based on the Californian highway patrol motorcycle cops. Well I thought it was a good title for a post ha ha!!

Having spent most of the session imaging the wonderful Comet Hergenrother. I wanted to just have my first go at the huge California nebula NGC 1499 before closing up.

This image is very noisy as only 22 minutes were captured at ISO 1600. My 40D is unmodded so I was pleasantly surprised with the amount of red light captured. Also worth a session with the UHC filter too.  A target with good altitude for UK observers so I will definately revisit with some long exposure. Keep looking for the latest pics. I cant wait to see a difference. I was so pleased last year when I images the horsehead for the first time. A very smooth image with some fine detail was the result. shortcut to it here http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ltib644lAfk/TzJrWhg_pKI/AAAAAAAAAYk/yzT1cm9OTyE/s1600/flame+horse+weirdcropped.jpg

Comet 168P/ Hergenrother

 

Great news for keen comet observers, a well known periodic comet has suddenly gone into a substantial outburst and is now visible through backyard telescopes. 168P/ Hergenrother is a short period comet which visits the inner solar every 6.9 years. Normally the comet glows at a sorry magnitude 15 however something happened - perhaps a new dust jet - which caused the comet to brighten considerably, recent visual estimates place the comet between magnitude 10.2 and 10.5 putting the icy visitor within range of 6" aperture telescopes. Here is an animation I made from 60 x 1 minute exposures. Visible in the top corner of Pegasus at present and moving it's way through to Andromeda.

This is my Animation of 60 x 1 minute frames.

 

 

60 X 1 minute frames stacked in Deep Sky Stacker and a little DDP

A billion Stars

Been a little busy recently, Going on holiday, Back to work, A set of nights, Sending eldest daughter to University, all plays havoc with the astronomy. I have been playing a bit with Maxim DL. I am trying to use the auto focus setup procedure and combine automation with exposure control. I still have a slight DEC drift and need to re centre the image by a few arc seconds every other exposure. So just trying to get everything sorted out. Andromeda was at a nice elevation so I thought I would have a little test.

This shot 2 Hour 13 Minute exposure in 3 & 5 minute subs. No dark frame subtraction, Flats or bias taken. Iso 1600. Canon 40D through my imaging set up. Comparing it to the others I have taken I think it is the best hands down. I would appreciate any feedback too!

My own criticism is that if I had taken a few short exposures I could tease out a little more detail in the core. Easily remedied as maxim has saved the camera rotation angel when I plate solved the image. So another visit sometime soon I hope. I might consider sending it to sky at night mag too.