M103

M103 (Ngc581) is one of the more remote open clusters in Messier's catalog, at about 8,000 light years distant in one of the most recognised constellations of Cassiopeia the queen. Visible in my binoculars against a rich star field it was the last entry to his original catalogue without him actually observing it. Well Mr Messier I have seen it. and I have ticked it off my list. The bright star also visible at the top is Ruchbah or(δ) Delta Cassiopeiae  Cassiopeiae. See finder chart. To me this star is a little more interesting than the cluster. It is an eclipsing binary star system consisting of a pair of stars that orbit about each other over a period of 759 days.


The primary a white sub giant has a stellar classification of A5III-IV, with the luminosity class of IV indicating that it has exhausted the hydrogen at its core and has begun to evolve through the subgiant phase into a giant star. It has expanded to about 3.9 times the Sun's radius. It is moving through the Galaxy at a speed of 43.9 km/s relative to the Sun.

M39

The last week has been a little traumatic for the whole family, Our eldest daughter has been waiting to find out if she has the grades to get into Uni. A sigh of relief as she is awarded her primary place at Anglia Ruskin. Congratulations Jasmine. The Younger two have been driving us nuts as they are desperate to go on their sunny holiday and bored of being at home from school.

The RA drive on the mount was very tight and needed a strip down and rebuild, All went well until I ran a test on the guiding. What could be the matter here. PHD would not keep the guide star for more than a few seconds. Lets not panic yet I thought so I ran 60 x 30 second test shots. A nightmare. The subject has moved over a degree across the field of view. The only thing I could think of was the polar alignment. I do my polar alignment using the Kochab clock method. Always worked well for me!! As I looked through the finder the illuminated cross moved, damn, the whole finder had been knocked at some point and almost fell out the holder. Not a great deal more I can do tonight. Next day allowed to me to strip it all down and rebuild and align the polar finder. A chimney pot half a mile up the road stayed where it should be as the pole finder was tightened into position.

A new test on Scheat in Andromeda was perfect. 2 minutes, 5 minutes, 10 minutes was no issue at all.

M39 was the target of choice nearly above my head so I ran 30 x 2 minute guided exposures at 1600 ISO. Processed in Maxim DL & Photoshop.

A new View of Altair

I have been looking at a few different ways of making an effective diffraction grating. Just thought I would post this pic of Altair. Not going to tell you yet what I have used. This is a stack of 3 pics from 30, 90, 150 seconds. Not quite the desired effect but looks good to me nonetheless.

The Western Veil NGC 6960

     I have just had a thought as I sit here typing. How about bringing one of the names of the veil upto modern day times. Known as the witches broom. I will change it to Harry's Nimbus 3000. Good old Harry Potter.

      Not having a modified Canon I have limited sensitivity to the faint nebulosity that the western Veil displays. A revisit for sure with the UHC filter attatched. Last night was certainly the poorest night of the last 4 with a high dew point moisture was dripping from the outside of the dome.
Iso 1600 with 58 minutes of data has at least captured the wave like shape behind the naked eye star 52 Cygni.

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

M2

M2 (NGC7089) is one of the largest globular clusters consisting of approximately 150,000 stars located within our galaxy at a distance of approximately 36,000 light years. Estimated to be 13 billion years old, almost as old as time itself. A lovely view at high power resolve the cluster into a swarm of bees. Even with my Megrez 90 I am pleased to resolve nearly all the way to what is a very dense core. Once again Iso 800 works well with the clusters and an hour of 2 minute guided exposures. A fantastic well illuminated wide field has not required a need for flats here.

Lonely among us.

Floating amongst a myriad of stars lost in time for 10 billion years,(a junior in globular standards) M71 will have spent eons watching the birth and growth of our galaxy looking down from it's vantage point outside the disk of the milky way 1200 light years away. To it's left lies the wonderfully coloured g Sagittae a red giant in it's twilight years some 640 times more luminous that our sun and 55 times more massive too.

Stacked in Maxim DL and processed in Photoshop this 1 hour exposure at Iso 800 has had no darks, flats, or Bias frames. A minimal DDP stretch. I find with globulars less is more with the processing. A pleasing result and very happy being being able to resolve stars to the core of M71

Altair.

Having repositioned the guidescope further foward to allow easier connectability for the Canon. A complete rebalance was required after realligning the scopes. Altair was bright in the east and a suitable candidate for practicing on. Guidescope in perfect sync to the canon so I ran a test of 2 each of one two five and ten minute exposures at ISO 800. The ten minute was very bright and I did think that it would be unusable but no it stacked along with the others to produce a 36 minute guided image of  α Aquilae our 12th closest star to us Altair at 16.7 light years it is one of the closest stars to be directly imaged. Altair is an A type main sequece star that's nearly double our suns size but an increase in luminosity of approx 11 times.
Altair possesses an extremely rapid rate of rotation; it has a rotational period of
approximately 9 hours. For comparison, the equator of the sun requires just over 25 days for a complete rotation. This rapid rotation forces Altair to be oblate, its equatorial
diameter is over 20 percent greater than its polar diameter. Below image

 False-color image of the rapidly rotating star Altair, made with the MIRC imager on the CHARA array on Mt. Wilson

Image from Wikipedia

IC 5070 The pelican

Just off the ease coast of florida in NGC7000 The North American Nebula lies the strange, wierd, call it what you will, Pelican Nebula. Good job there is no flamingo nebula (I have a thing about flamingos dont even ask)
Located in the same arm our ouf galaxy (Orion arm) approx 2000 light years away, A flood of ultraviolet radiation is being released from massive stars hidden behind the thick dust permeating the region. The intense radiation is wrecking having on the local environment. The radiation ionizes parts of the molecular cloud while eroding and evaporating other areas within the cloud. Portions of the molecular cloud consisting of higher density matter resist ionization and survive as long pillars of dust and gas thus creating the shape we see today.

This is a somewhat adhoc shot. The wind was a tad furious around the dome but it was at least clear. I had set the Iso to 3200 to see what I could pick up for another imaging run when I caught a glimpse of the Pelican. I set up for 30 x 2minute exposures and went back inside the house. I never expected a great deal because of the wind. Having binned 10 shots I processed the remainder. I small DDP stretch and a pretty star spike later, no darks,flats ect gave me this image. If you remember last year I took a shot of the North American in both UHC filtered and unfiltered and what a dramatic difference. http://www.malcsastro.blogspot.co.uk/2010/08/ngc-7000-with-uhc-filter.html My intention is to do the same again. WATCH THIS SPACE.

Cocoon Nebula Wide Field

Having spent a night last week imaging some delight from the south. Upon processing the smallest stars appeared as donut shaped. My focus was off my 100th of a mm test images looked ok but it wasn't until they were stacked and processed you could see there was a problem. So last night was really just a test to try and put in place a good focussing technique. I started with π2cyg a 4.4 mag star less than 3° from my target. I use my bahtinov mask to achieve a near perfect focus. I then switch to Imagesplus and fine tune using the FWHM process. Overall I was pretty happy with what was done. Time was now gone 1.00am and work loomed for the next day. So I ran a 30 x 1 minute exposure at Iso1600. Deleted 2 subs and stacked a series of 28 frames to give me this shot. High in the North east under a very poor sky. I will endeavour to have another go later this year when positioned in the west and a good dark sky.

The Eagle Rises

A short window of opportunity arises for some of our galaxies southern belles.
As wonderful my new site is I still have a restricted view of the south and thus
only a small time frame in which to capture any of the wonders here.I could not
even see antares from my previous location. So as you can imagine was quite frustrating
during the summer months. Due south for me now still lies above the town of Watton 3 miles away, sky glow is not too bad along with a never truly dark sky I have been careful in setting the right exposure. 26 minutes was all I could capture for this beauty. Having never imaged M16 before I was delighted to capture some of the ha I knew I couldnt push any harder as the test images were almost washed out. So here it is The pillars of creation set against a myriad of diamonds.