Leo Triplet

 I swear it is only ever clear the night of and after a full moon. Just my luck really, We have not had any decent nights for a while it seems, I wanted to get out and do something. I bought from                 U.K. Astronomy Buy & Sell (astrobuysell.com) a new Optolong  L Pro filter a light pollution filter that is more and more needed even in my rural location. Optolong LPS filter L-Pro for deep sky nebula consteallation photography-Optolong Optics Co.,Ltd

My only real unobstructed view is to the East and is the town of Watton is just 3 miles as the crow flies so the glow of the town radiates into view and the filter is needed. So my first test was the beautiful Leo triplet of galaxies. This image was taken over two nights using the filter and worked well I think. Only a very small gradient was noticed after some aggressive processing which was easily removed. I am quite happy with this image after some really poor seeing and the guiding on the first night never achieving better than 1.2 arc sec (usual average is 0.75.

59 x 5 minute sub exposures controlled with the ASIair pro2, stacked in Deep sky stacker and processed in Photoshop.

This trio is now accepted as part of the M96 group of galaxies and then part of an even larger group still.  I think to the accepted idea is also that M66 is a disturbed Barred Spiral. The front arm certainly looks like it has seen tidal interaction by a passer by whilst the rear arm looks somewhat undisturbed.

A trio in Leo.

Unfortunately I have been ill and off work these past few months and my astronomy has taken a back seat. along with my cycling and my passion for just about everything that means the world to me.  I have been outside just 3 times since. I am now thankfully on the road to recovery with the support of my wonderful partner & family plus some great close friends. Mentioning no names Des & Phil oops, and once again my love for astronomy and everything else is returning. Also a big thanks also to all my colleagues that have asked after me at work. most of which have a gander as to what this astro geek gets up to at night. I enjoy talking to you guys & gals about my amazing hobby.

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Looking back over some old images. I found the ever popular Leo triplet of galaxies. Taken with the Canon 40D. I knew I could improve on it so that was the nights target. Taken through the Williams Optics GT81 and using 20 minute guided sub exposures. Calibrated with Dark frames in Maxim DL5. Processed in photoshop. This final cropped image is 3 hours of data. A very pleasing result Perfect focus and some lovely lane structure in all 3 galaxies.

Me being me I wasn't just satisfied with that. So I loaded Carte Du Ceil and had a closer look. I downloaded the PGC Principle Galaxies Catalogue and brought up my field of view.  The field lit up with large number of very little red dots. I loaded side by side Photoshop with my image. It soon became very clear that I had a deep image. The 15th- 18th magnitude galaxies were easily visible. After finding a few dozen I thought I should mark them and see how many I could find. There was a few places I must have missed as I seem to be adding more each time I    look. So far the total is 153 and counting.

The fainter galaxies were somewhat more of a challenge.

The image has been plate solved and I needed this to locate and verify the position of the objects that were barely visible even at 400 x  zoom in Photoshop. But I did find that an inverse of the frame gives greater contrast as some of the faintest smudges are just a couple of shades brighter than the background.

Incredibly small movements in the mouse movement moved the RA and DEC by arc seconds across the frame and CDC confirms the location of PGC 3542189. As I mentioned earlier the subtle difference in colour in the centre of the square with a contrast boost and inverted. reveals the presence of this Magnitude 20.31 Galaxy. Position confirmed as RA:11:18:17 and 
DEC :13:03:11. Unfortunately I am unable to find any information on the galaxy type or distance / redshift other than it has been catalogued.

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 I just picked up on my emails to learn  that our society http://www.brecklandastro.org.uk/ will again host the presenters of the Sky at night programme for a piece based on the HST. and it's deep field images. I think I will point the scopes next clear night and put in a contribution of my own deep field. They may be interested in what I have just done as well as a previous post on M97 & M108 with some very distant quasars. We will wait and see.

Leo Triplet.

I had aquired just over an hour of data as I mentioned that I had imaged the Leo triplet before the supernova was found. . I had found on the portable hard drive another 90 minutes worth of sub frames imaged last year. So I thought I would combine them and see what the result was. It doesn't matter how many times you say it more "data more detail". Processed with images plus with a ddp stretch and a gradient removal in CS4 I am quite pleased with the improvement. 2 hours 23 Minutes at Iso1600.

Sn2013am

A type II supernova was discovered on 21st March in a galaxy far far away. About 35 Million light years away in M65. Image 1 shows the pic I took just a few days before core collapse. Pic 2 was I took last night showing the cataclysmic collapse and explosion of a star maybe 40 times larger than our own sun. Dust in the galaxy has obscured some of the light from reaching us and it is not as bright as predicted. Just so you can really get a grip on reality here this happened 35 million years ago.

 

This as I mentioned in a previous post is my second Supernova imaged.

It's About Time.

Comet C/2001 L4 PANNSTARRS has finally graced our northern hemisphere skies. This evening for me was a little frustrating. Located below a new moon it should have been visible. Except there was a horizon of cloud that stayed put for the duration. It was good to see via facebook a couple of fellow bloggers and Breckland AS society members, Dr Dan ,  Barnfield Bob catch a glimpse of the comet this evening.The skies however have cleared. The seeing not perfect but I have set the cameras in motion. Having done very little astronomy since christmas it feels good to get back to it. I had planned on a slight modification to my set up in which the 66mm guidescope would come off and used as a grab and go. My imaging scope would then be connected to an off axis guider and camera, thus lightening the load on my ageing mount. But unfortunatly the focusser just could not take the weight for the auto focus to work. So I have gave up on the idea and rebuilt the 66mm back on board. I have also increased the counterweight slightly and this seems to help with the guiding consistency. With this I wanted an easy target to test the system. I caught about 90 mins will process in the morning.

As promised from last night I managed to capture some photons of that were travelling through the darkness of space for 35 million years to arrive last night at my camera lens. This trio of galaxies all look slightly different as the galactic discs are tilted to different angles from our line of sight.The galaxy on the left is known as NGC 3628, seen edge on with obscuring dust lanes cutting across the plane of the galaxy. while the disks of M65(top) and M66 are both inclined enough to show off their spiral structure. There is evidence that all 3 galaxies have interacted with each other some 800 million years ago.

Leo Triplet

Object: M65, M66, NGC3628
Type: Galaxy Cluster
Constellation: Leo

Date: 3rd february 09

Equipment: William Optics Megrez 90 Canon EOS 40D

Subframes: 98 x 30 second exposures unguided at ISO800 & 19 x 30 second darks .

Processed: In Images Plus 2.0 with a DDP stretch. 6 Iterations on a adaptive Richardson Lucy deconvolution filter.
Notes: This cropped Image was taken under a 62% illumination from the moon hovering by the pliedies. I will play with the processing a little more I am sure I can tease a little more from the structure from the galaxies.

Back In Time: Light from these 3 started its journey 35 million years or so ago give or take an eon or so.

Occasional killer asteroids could have spawned temporary rings of debris around Earth and played a major role in changing the world climate, according to scientists. Resembling the rocky halos that encircle Saturn, one such terrestrial ring might have chilled the globe considerably about 35 million years ago.
The geologic record indicates that Earth endured a brutal cold spell at the time, possibly sparked by a debris ring that persisted from 100,000 to several million years, the New Mexico researchers said. (courtesy of newsfinder)