Iris Nebula

I have made a few modificationss to my motorfocus system that was on the 90mm. I have extended the plate and made a 90 degree turn so it can fit the 110. Well it works. The weather not so favourable though. A small patch of sky to the north was still clear. So I had my first go at the Iris nebula. Recently imaged by a few other Breckland society members. I managed an hours worth of data in 5 minute subs. This is a cropped image from the SXV-M25C. I am not happy with the colour though. The blue needs to be stronger.

M33 The Triangulum Galaxy.

 The weather recently has been quite good. Forecast was excellent and clear the whole night. No work either for me this week so I decided to go an all nighter. Happy that the mount was working fine, I decided that 10 minute exposures would be the order of play. My Eastern view is excellent and suffers no light pollution so should not be too detremental of the Canon 40D in noise. I managed to grab 220 minutes in total in 10 minute subs. As this is a test for the new set up I have yet to take 10 minute darks, so no darks subtraction. Stacked in DSS and processed in Imagesplus I am pleased with the result. Pic 2 is a reprocess by fellow Blogger Andrew via his pix insight software. Considerable difference in detail. I may just have to invest in. Just not sure if I have the time at present to learn a whole new processing pathway.

First test of the mount

Having completed the set up and install of cables etc. time has come to test the mount from it,s initial switch on. I aimed at a familiar target and let PHD do it's set up. My first test shot was a 10 minute exposure this would have been a personal record in itself. The second was 20 minutes and the third 30 minutes. to say the least I was very excited in seeing an image appear like these on the screen.

I am very pleased with the initial results and I want to look into recording the periodic error, using the data from that to guide more accurately.

I used the familiar Canon 40D as the imaging camera, I am of course used to it's set up and user friendliness. I would restrain myself and set up the starlight express when I am happy everthing works.

It appears everything is working well.

Wave goodbye, Say hello

I have said goodbye to trusted old friends, Sold it to fund an upgrade, Welcome to your new home.

New mount Ioptron Ieq45mark 2 with GPS & 8407 controller.
William Optics FLT110 DDG TMB Triplet------Starlight express SXVF M25C colour camera
William Optics GTF81 5 element apo-------------Starlight express Lodestar guider.

Me and a fellow Breckland AS member Andy went to collect on Tuesday, Since then I haven't been out of the observatory carefully setting up aligning/balancing and installing cables and new software.
The biggest issue I had was trying to remove ASCOM 5 to upgrade to 6. It had also disabled Microsoft. net framework. Had to remove and update to version 4. So thanks to Andrew this time for his wisdom.
I am pleased yo say that is now all done and time to play.
Image acquisition will be done with and old favourite of Images plus. They support SX cameras via ASCOM . I intend to sell the Canon 40d soon but not before I call on a few faint fuzzies to test the new scope. I also can't wait for the next lunar cycle as you can see from previous posts I have developed my interest in lunar photography. I am eagre to test the resolving power and the quality of images I can come up with.

 

So time to close the dome it has clouded over. Goodnight all.

M 27 The Dumbell Nebula

An old favourite was captured a few nights ago. I was testing the focus setup on maxim using the v curve to autofocus. It took about 10 minutes and settles on a focus mark. I ran the same set up to capture Stephans quintet too. I was more than pleased with the result. 2 minute exposures taken here at Iso 1600. a massive crop here shows the pin point stars.

 

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.

Apollo Landing Sites

In honour of what would have been Neil Armstrong's 83rd birthday. I have posted 3 of the 6 Apollo landing sites. I have images all the sites but not happy with the quality of the others. I will of course post them when I am happy with them.

Rheita E

There are a hundreds of multi crater features to explore. I was scanning the area with the live view when the bright wall of Rheita E stood out like a spolight on a stage. Processing has toned down he feature here but too late it had caught my attention enough to capture this image. 1000 frames were stacked in Registax and sharpened in Imagesplus. As mentioned previously the seeing was not brilliant and contrast has suffered.

I was also taken by the two overlapping craters of Steinheil & watt. The angle of illumination shows off well the 10,000 foot high walls of Steinheil & Watt. You can clearly see also the ejecta rays of material from out of view Tycho.

Mare Nectaris

It appears to me that Mare Nectaris is overspill and run off from Mare Tranquillitatis. The visual appearance is of an alluvial fan as material was deposited into the basin, known as Sinus Asperitatis . I imagine numerous craters were lost as the Nectaris basin filled with lava, In fact you can just make one out to the east of the 28Km Medler (sat in the mouth of the basin). A ghost crater called Daguerrre.

 

A wealth of other interesting features surround this 333km basin. To it's east are a number of craters dedicated to the navigators of the sea such as Columbo ,Cook, Magelhaens. Moving to the south west is the part sunken and pockmarked Fracastorius. Finally and to the west is a popular target for astrophotographers the triple crater feature of the high walled Theophilus, Cyrillus & Catharina.

For me a wonderful area to explore.

 

Mare Humorum

Captured 3 days after last quarter Mare Humorum is another fine example of a lunar sea. Formed approx 3.9 billion years ago from a huge impact. The resulting impact basin filled with lava. At 390km in lenth it is one of the smaller Mare visible to us. The seeing was of poor quality during this imaging session. So apologies that this image is not tho the usual standard.

 Features...
    Dominated by a more recent impact Gassendi has a wealth of features by itself from numerous hills and Rilles to the amazing double peaks. It's walls are well eroded but the rim still visible above the lava floor. Below Gassendi is what appears to beach, as the lava cools and cracks it has formed what apears as concentric rings to the basin edge. Futher down on the southern shores is the half sunken crater of Doppelmayer, and the almost "Ghost crater" Puiseux. Moving East you can clearly see a series of Rille known as Rimae Hippalus. The cental floor is littered with craterlets as large as 10km. Numerous hills are visible as their shadows are cast across the smooth plains.

Tycho

Captured on the evening of the 25th July. I love tracing the ejecta rays from the 108 million year old Tycho. I get the impression of a near verticle impact from the ejecta dispersion that can be traced across every quadrant of the moon.