Springtime Galaxies

The clear nights are so few and far between. I have been desperate to update some of the older images from my collection, Last imaged 10 years ago and really not that good.

A minute collection of data here as the clouds rolled in again. Had a few issues with the guiding and binned a large amount of subs. My error though. I had left the guiding set to Lunar DOH........

So in all I have just 10 x 5 minutes Red, 4 x 5 minutes Green & just 3 x 5 minutes in Blue.

Quite pleased that there are over a 100 faint fuzzies in the frame.

If it wasn't for bad luck

       I would have no luck at all. Is how the saying goes. Mystic Malc predicted a couple of weeks ago that we would indeed have a good week of clear skies last week. So we did, BUT I was not going to see any of them. Last monday to this Sunday inclusive was my first set of  nights on the night shift this year. Here continueth the run of bad luck.
      So if we skip back to last May I dismantled my observatory and packed everything away while we moved and of course missed Sn2011dh in M51 last June. Whilst I was building the new observatory last September I missed sn2011fe in M101.
      On the 23rd of Feb this year I imaged a wide field inc M95

and of course saw no Supernova See pic.Tonight is my first night at home again and guess what the clouds have rolled in. Am I destined to miss every Supernova.




To continue the run of misfortune. Last night 10/4/12 saw a reasonably clear. Google said the clear sky wouldn't last so I hastily set up and focussed on a set up star. Here in is where the problem lies M95 was a good 60 degrees across the sky and I completly forgot to refocus. Looks like a tenth of a mm out. But the good news is I have managed to get my first image of the sn2012aw.

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.