Rupes Recta

The straight wall as it is commonly known is a geological fault about 110 km's in lenth. From the suns angle it appears as a steep cliff face. Nothing can be futher from the truth. a gentle 7 degree incline gives a striking appearance. A 3 pane mosaic gives wonderful sharpness and detail.

 

I think I am really enjoying the moon again. We regularly curse and wish it away. But I must say I have loved every minute waiting for Regisax to show me a final image. I use Photoshop to stack. I must make one apology though. I have forgotten to a RGB align on the past few images therefore at high magnification you can see the misalignment. I will revisit and correct them. But for now I entend to enjoy our closest neighbour La luna. Comments always welcome. Feel free to offer them.

Addendum 22/4/13 I have now RGB aligned and a gentle sharpen added.



Montes Apenninus

For the first time I am trying a 4 x 2" ED barlow. Working at approx f 28 There are more than a few wonderful targets I can build a detailed mosaic image from. The first target was the stunning Montes Apenninus. Captured from the enigmatic Copernicus in shadow down through the high walls and multiple central peaks of  eratosthenes. A gentle curve to the rugged mountain peaks extends down to Mons Hadley, Home now to a lunar rover and the landing site of Apollo 15 near to Hadley rille. I have just spent a few minutes zooming in on the region and can match features to confirm the landing area. I can also just make out Hadley rille meandering it's way though the region. http://airandspace.si.edu/collections/imagery/apollo/AS15/images/A15site_traverses.jpg . A lava flow into or from Mare Serenitatis concludes our 600 mile journey across the mountains. Centre is my favourite crater Plato, A lava filled impact crater some 3.8 billion years old It appears to be 101 miles of perfectly smooth lava?? To the east is again a strange feature called Vallis Alpes anoth lava filled fault either side of steep walled cliffs.My last visit is to two craters on the right the higher to the left is the steep walled Aristoteles and the slightly smaller Eudoxus. Here endeth my tour of a beautiful area of our nearest neighbour.

 

Addendum 22/4/13 I have now RGB aligned and a gentle sharpen added.

No deep sky for a week or two.

Although the moon is the bain of us deep sky imagers, we unfortunately cannot get away from it. So rather than moan about it I thought I would take advantage on a rare clear night. Using a 2x Barlow and the 40D. I use a programme I have mentioned a few times before called EOS movie record to record an HD video than can be stacked in Registax.

I have spent a great deal of time perfecting a wavelet algorithm to give the right amount of sharpness against the often seen over saturation into noise.


Mistaken by early astronomers as seas they were dubbed maria Latin for "Seas".
These Basalt plains were formed 3 to 4 billion years ago as lava flows erupted over the cooling surface of the moon.You can see clearly area of thicker magma that give the appearance of rivers flowing through the plains. The 8-9 largest craters you see are all between 70-100 miles wide. The light across the terminator has illuminated the back walls of several craters.
These walls are on average 10,000 feet high.
The areas are less reflective than the Highlands and thus appear darker.

Finally.......

The weather has been unkind, the neighbours wall and roof unmovable, these are just two of the annoyances to a backyard astronomer like myself. This is the first image I have taken of comet Pan Starrs. As it moves further north it also fades in brightness. With a wonderful fan like tail still a wonderful sight through a wide field scope like mine. It cleared the roof structure at around 11.00 pm and I set about with a few 1 minute frames to stack. I am pleased with the result. I was gutted that I missed the opportunity to capture it with the beautiful Andromeda galaxy. Unlike a couple of my fellow bloggers. Andrew for starters at  http://blog.andrewluck.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Final.jpg    Dr Dan's http://farawaythings.blogspot.co.uk/Fantastic result gents. I am a bit disappointed that there is no second point of interest in the image, on the other hand just happy to get a decent enough image to publish.

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.

M99, M100

Saturday night was a moonless clear night and at that point I was unaware of a new supernova in the galaxy M65. My scope was trained a few degrees away into Coma and caught a wide field image of M99(below) & M100(right) Both on average 55 Million light years away. I was testing the setup on 5 minute subs. Unfortunatly I have no stock of 300 second dark frames so the final wide field wasn't upto my usual standards. So rather than waste it I have cropped them and here they are. Please note M100 was very close to the edge of the frame. Stars are not perfect.

Supernova in M65 SN 2013am

Spotted on March 21 that M. Sugano, of Kakogawa, Japan had spotted a new supernova in the galaxy M65 – the 65th entry in Messier’s catalog of 110 objects – amateur astronomers expected the star to brighten to magnitude 11 or 12, shiny enough to nab in even a pedestrian 4.5-inch reflector.

Only 7 days previous I had spent the first clear night since christmas. I though I would have a go at an old favourite the Leo triplet. From my image below M65 is the upper galaxy of the trio and of course no supernova. The next clear sky opportunity I get I will have another go and image my second supernova. Previous in M95 last year. http://www.malcsastro.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/M95

Within a week, a typical nearby supernova beams brightly enough to show in amateur telescopes. Not 2013am. It’s been 10 days and the star remains stubbornly faint. Professional astronomers examined the light of the supernova on March 22 and gleaned a couple interesting tidbits. First, the blast is tearing the it apart, sending debris into space at over 4,300 miles (7,000 km) per second. Second, the star’s light is “reddened” or dimmed by dust along our line of sight.

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.

Sir Patrick Alfred Caldwell-Moore, CBE, FRS, FRAS

A new star shines tonight in the heavens. I was at work today when I head the sad news of the death of Sir Patrick Moore I am sure we all have our own wonderful memories of him whether it was watching him on tv, meeting him at astrofest or just simply being in awe of a true great astronomer. An inspiration to generations of men, women & children to gaze to the heavens, for me it was that spark of eccentric genius that could entertain and leave you wanting more, thats what got me interested in astronomy when I was a child. I could go on for hours, but I guess we all would like to smile and think of our own special memory of a wonderful man.

I hope now Patrick you have all the answers to all the questions you have ever asked about our existance. But I guess using a great quote from the great man himself.

"We just dont know!"

 

 Rest in peace Sir Patrick.

Kemble's Cascade

Has it really been a month since my last imaging session?. Last night saw a couple of hours of frosty clear skies here in Norfolk. So I took every advantage before a high cloud cover appeared at 21.00hrs. I was a little disappointed I could only manage 42 Minutes of useful data though. I have seen recently a number of images of a wonderful asterism hidden away in the constellation of Camelopardalis. The pretty open cluster of around 45 stars make up NGC 1502 that does have an association with the aptly named Kemble's Cascade. I dont think I have enough data here to show it off to it's best. Imaging at ISO 800 a bit of a push as the moon wasn't all that far away. I was however really impressed with the framing. A perfect size for my set up.