A Mamoth Cosmic Collision

300 Million lights years away lies a quintet of interacting galaxies.

 

NASA/ ESA Hubble Space Telescope has imaged  the central part of Stephan's Quintet, giving a magnificent view of a gigantic cosmic collision. Weird, highly distorted features, dust lanes crossing between galaxies and long filaments of stars and gas extending far beyond the central regions all suggest galaxies twisted by violent encounters. The galaxies float through space, distorted shapes moulded by tidal interactions, weaving together in the intricate figures of an immense cosmic dance, choreographed by gravity. My lowely 90mm Set up does not quite achieve the resolution of hubble but none the less I am very happy with the 1.5 hours of 5 minute sub exposures giving me a lovely sharp image. I also like the way Ngc7331 frames itself with it's gaggle of galaxies in tow.

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