Heavens door

Mrs Rae Diane Dent

31st Oct 1930 - Sept 1st 2010.

 Mum, I will see you face in the stars forever.

Be safe and happy with your son Andrew and husband Raymond.

Until we all meet again Goodnight and Godbless.

The sun came up this morning;

It wasn't vey bright.

My dark mood cast a shadow;

It's hard to see the light.

We all have just one mother

And, now that her life on earth is done,

The emptiness and loss I feel

Make it hard to see the sun.

Tomorrow is a brand new day;

May the pain and sadness lighten.

I will remember all her love,

And the sky will brighten.

Gone is not forgotten;

Her love remains behind;

She's traveled in a new direction,
Love know no space and time.

Mum you know I love you.

She will care for me from above.

She will send me starlight and rainbows

To remind me of your love.

Persied Meteor 2010

     We have spent the last few days down in Yeovil, Somerset visiting family far away from the clear skies of Norfolk.
     We all had a wonderful day at Longleat safari park too as I watched the skies clear above us on the drive back. The plan was to just sit the camera on the tripod and shoot from the back garden. A few test shots revealed a lovely orange sky. I decided there and then to get away. About 6 miles from Yeovil is a beautiful and reasonable dark site on top of Ham hill in Stoke Sub Hamden. I arrived at 11.30 pm to a car park full of meteor watchers. I found a quiet corner and started to shoot. We had an amazing view to the south Sagittarius was easily visible as the teapot sank below the hill and the milky way arched across the entire sky. Most of the cars disappeared about midnight and left me and another chap clicking away and chatting. We saw some amazing meteors that left a trails of smoke for sometimes 15 seconds after but annoyingly never in the direction of where our cameras we pointed. However I did capture this one flashing through Camelopardalis at 01:16:56 again leaving a trail of smoke behind it. I did capture about 30 others but none as bright as this one.

Cant decide if its worth sending to one of our publications.

In a galaxy far far away

I was saying the other night to a fellow member at our societies observatory that I shall spend the rest of the summer taking obscure faint fuzzies as most of the big and bright objects have been covered. Then Barry says well there is always room for improvement. True I said especially as I now have the field flattener so I think it may be the time to improve on a few of the objects previously imaged and cropped considerably because of coma. I was going to image the Cocoon nebula last night then realised that imaging at the near verticle will cause the camera to hit the mount. I could see the Andromeda galaxy naked eye well above the neighbours rooftop so I thought yeah lets have ago. Seven seconds later I was focused and set up a run of 90 pics. I didnt bother firing up the guider as I have no problems with 60 second exposures when facing east.

Comparing it to the previous image a bit further down the blog I am very pleased that there has been no cropping and a greater depth of focus has returned a very pleasing result.

Object: M31 The Andromeda Galaxy


Type: Galaxy

Constellation: Pegasus

Instrument: William Optics Megrez 90mm, William Optics MkIII field flattener.

F/stop: 5.52

Exposure: 1 hour 23 minutes

IS0: 1600

Date: 05/06/Aug/2010

Location: Saham Toney Norfolk.
Enhancement: Images Plus 3.82 DDP stretch and 3 Sharpening iterations.

NGC 7000 With UHC Filter

Hi everyone,

I am enjoying my 3 weeks off 1 down 2 to go Daddy day care is fun!!(most of the time) although last night was the first night outside since last Saturday. First off I have solved the little mystery of the failure of guide camera and dew heaters. The power supply / charger for the power tank had broken. So each time I thought I was charging nothing happened and of course the voltage dropped below usable and caused equipment failure. All working fine now.

Went out at about 9.00 pm to test the bahtinov mask kindly supplied by fellow member and manufacturer of these fine items. Made to a professional standard with precise laser cutting of the material providing extremely sharp focus spikes to allow quick and easy focus. Less than 10 seconds I think. Please see Keiths page on my list of fellow bloggers and get ordering they are worth every reasonably priced penny.

This time I thought I would complete my little task of taking NGC7000 again this time with the UHC filter in place. I was very pleased with the result showing the true colour of the Hydrogen Alpha line emissions.

This stack is of 38 X 1 minute unguided subs with no dark calibration / flats or bias frames used.
Stacked in deep sky stacker and a DDP stretch in Images Plus. No additional colour enhacement but I will have a play and if its worthy of posting I will let you see in due course. Let me know what you think comments are always welcome.

Ngc 7000 North American Nebula

I have a couple of weeks holiday at the moment and Saturday was the first night with a decent clear stable sky. Powered up everything to find the red dot finder battery flat. (oops that was me) the Atik guide camera stopped working. Unable to download an image??? and the dew heaters stopped working just a yellow light .Great night this is going to be. Done a quick 2 star alignment and had a quick look at a few deep sky delights via the Canon. Started with some favourites to ease my pain like M27 and M71. Took a slow slew over to M11 and M26 found a couple of lovely ngc open clusters. Then headed towards M16 damn just obscured by the roof of the observatory. Not a good time of night to see it for me. So I headed back to Cygnus and had a good look at Everybody's favourite Alberio. finally moved across to The North American Nebula. I took about 10 minutes worth of data a month or so ago done a quick process to it and nothing highly dissapointed with the lack of colour. So I set up a quick run of 20 x 5 minute exposures, as I have no guiding capability tonight, and done a little deep sky stack on them. No lats or darks and I even took them in JPEG I know stop swearing at me. I didnt really have any intention of doing anything with them after last time so wasnt really expecting a great deal. Any way enough rambling from me here are a couple of pics. i think I like the negative better very pleased with the accuracy of the mount giving round stars. and a good flat field. Enjoy

M81 & M82 Again

I never get bored of these beautiful galaxies nestling themselves about 12 million light years away M81's (ngc 3031 Bodes Galaxy) A near perfect arm structure circles all the way to it's core. I can also see a 3 dimensional structure like water going down the plug hole to be swallowed up by a raging black hole of about 70 million solar masses. However only one super nova found in recent years found in 1993.

M82 (cigar galaxy ngc3034) also positions itself at the same distance. Recently well about 200 million years ago the pair were interacting resulting in a large amount of gas being funneled into its core. Also known as the starburst galaxy as it produces stars at a rate 10 times faster that our own Milky Way.

The 3rd member of the group the much smaller and fainter NGC 3077 @ mag 10.6 has a very fine wispy structure this is a result of again tidal interaction between its parents many millions of years ago.

I can also confirm a few more faint fuzzies as you can see from my labelled picture.
down to an amazing mag 15.6 Unheard of from an amateur just 10 years ago.

Comet 2009 R1 McNaught

Congratulations go to Rob McNaught this is his 51st comet discovery during the course of the Siding Springs Survey. Expected to get another couple of magnitudes brighter by the end of the month just about when us Brits lose it.

I had a quick go the other morning around 2.45 when the moon was up and it had just risen over a neighbours rooftop. Knowing my luck the next week set of nights off I get will all be cloudy so get it while yuo can!!

Here is a stack of 6 x 30 second exposures at ISO400

Not an amazing pic but just glad to have seen it. Enjoy while you can.

M81 & M82 2 Hours

Hi again all,
Had a great night of clear skies again last night so from midnight I captured another 1 hours worth of photons. Again we have 60 x 1 minute exposures unguided and a master produced. I then combined both masters and done a little cropping due to camera alignment. Had to remove as we had our daughters 8th birthday party to capture. I am preety amazed at the result stars image is a little smoother and stars rounder too?

M81 & m82

Hi Everyone,
Had some good news on the work side of life. I will moving my shift pattern onto days by July. Finally I will become an astronomer again. Have a new nickname from the family too bless em I am now known as Astro Geek. On a week of rest this week cant get my sleep pattern right either probably due to an enormous wisdom tooth excavating through the side of my face. Good news is its coming out Monday morning after a 12 hour shift.

Enough of my woes. Here's the good stuff.

Went outside last night and the weather man said it was going to be clear so I believed him and rolled back the roof of the observatory and let the scopes equalize

I had a re balance and alignment done a month or so ago. I done a couple of test shots to focus etc. I set Images plus to 60 x 1 minute unguided exposures.

I lost a couple of shots over the course so here is a 58 minute taken in JPEG no flats no bias or darks as I had to bin them all due to the new field flattener.

My aim is to go out tonight and do another hours worth and see what that looks like when co added. So here is the first hours worth. Beware this could fall flat on its face and all I end up with is this image.

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Dynamic Duo Venus & Mercury

Had a break in the cloud coverage to take this pic of Venus & Mercury
taken @ 85mm with a .5 second exposure on the 8th April at 20.14
I would have liked to wait a little longer for a darker sky, but the clouds kept rolling in.

Sorry there has'nt been much activity here recently still stuck doing nights. Hopefully a light at the end of the tunnel coming soon though.

Good to see my fellow bloggers are producing some great work while I am locked (literally) inside. Take a few minutes to look at their stirling efforts please.

M51 Whirlpool Galaxy NGC 5194

After many hours of adjusting and checking the cameras are fixed correctly and square to the scope I have come to the conclusion that the generic Field flattener I had bought just doesn't work I know it was for a f5.5 to f6 scope and my scope is f6.7 but I lived in the vein hope that it wouldn't be that bad. Alas to no avail. Last week I put out a cry for help on UK Astro Ads and asked if anyone had a William Optics Mk3 field flattener which is dedicated for my scope. I had a reply from a really nice chap who said he had one, and a generic William Optics field flattener for refractors as well. He offered the mk 3 to me at a good price and offered to post both of them for me to test. I like so many others have had a few bad transactions on such sites so I as of course a little unsure when I clicked the pay pal button and duly paid up. A couple of days later a package arrives and you know that feeling you get in your stomach when you think things are about to go hideously wrong. I sat staring at the box while I drank my coffee and reluctantly opened it. What a surprise 2 immaculate field flatteners. Having hurdled our youngest happily playing on the carpet in front of me I grabbed the keys to my observatory and had a play. I attached my Canon T fitting to it and connected to scope focussed on a neighbours chimney and checked it out for defects. Last night we had a fantastic clear night despite the fear of a few hundred tonnes of Icelandic volcanic ash about to land on me I set about focusing using my live view and one of my fellow members who makes superb quality Batninov Masks see Keiths Astro over to your right. Now lets try this thing out. a quick 30 seconds to see if everything was there. I took 7 x 3 minute guided exposures and a few darks and started to stack. Here below is the summation of those Images of M51. Slightly over processed I know for a short duration image. BUT Astounded, Amazed, Totally shocked I have star shapes to the edge of the field I am so pleased to finally have an image that doesn't need 80% cropping. Now the bad news. I have had to dump my entire collection of Darks,Flats and Bias frames to start a new with the new Flattener. My Sincere thanks goes to Dr John and his faith and trust in mankind.(the flattener I didn't require now posted back)