Astro Imaging in the UK

Markarians Chain is a group of galaxies on the Virgo / Coma Berenices border. It’s a huge area of sky with hundreds of galaxies in it.

I thought it might be fun to do a multi year project to image to area. To start I’m planning on just taking quick overlapping images and registering them together to give me the final field of view that I’m aiming for. Then I can spend more time capturing better quality data and adding that to the initial file, which will improve the signal to noise ratio and enable better processing and more detail.

I might even add some colour data and Ha.

I counted at least 45 galaxies and that with just 30 minutes of exposure per pane – there are 5 panes in this image, damn the clocks going forward 🙁 It’s quite a large image so click on it!

Had another go at processing the data for M51. Now using Photoshop CS5 but cannot for the life of me work out how to correctly add in the Ha layer to the Red channel. I’ll keep working on it!

But this I do think is better than before!

My first attempt using a mono camera and R G B filters, cloud did cause me quite a lot of trouble throughout the night. Half a dozen times between 9pm and Midnight I lost the guide star. But the result was that I didn’t get as many as I hoped in each channel, and some of the frames that I used weren’t the best quality.

9 x 10m Red, Flats and Bias.
9 x 10m Green, Flats and Bias.
6 x 10m Blue, Flats and Bias.

Captured used the H9, SW FW, SW OAG, Baader RGB filters. Through the Vixen NA 140SSf.

Stacked in DSS, processed in PSCS2. Final alignment in Registar.

Very happy – looking forward to getting better quality subs and keeping the blue channel (stars) under control.

Having a few issues with Maxim , but things are starting to go to plan. Having the lodestar has made a great deal of difference 🙂 It’s great to have a choice of guide stars!!!

Two evenings imaging with few issues really tells me that I’ve made the right choice of guide cam 🙂

I don’t really do Galaxies – so have been hunting round for a nebula to image in the east. Found Abell 21, a very large planetary nebula.

Guiding was spot on for the whole evening. But I have strange stars 🙁

A 200% crop of one of the stars is below. I have a thread running on SGL >>HERE<<. I'm also going to contact Telescope House and see if they can give me some pointers on loosening the cell a little.

This is from a previous imaging run, showing that it isn’t tracking!

Left is 10 seconds, middle is 1 minute and right is 10 minutes all stretched to show the defect!

Just using the Christmas holidays to do a little tidying up of my images and found some that once again I completely forgot taking 🙂

Used the instructions found here http://bf-astro.com/hubbleP.htm for some final tweaks to the colour balance.

2 x 10m in Ha, 5 x 10m in OIII and 2 x 20m & 12 x 10 in SII (20m/50m/160m).

The last eclipse until 2014… even though we would only see the very end of the eclipse from the UK it was still worth making the effort.

I have pretty good horizons from a spot very close to home so was confident that I’d be able to see the moon almost as soon as she rose.

A Field in Coates

I knew that the moon was going to be rising just East of North East, but my digital compass decided it didn’t like being in a field and was telling me that North East was South :(. So Jamie and I watched the horizon for signs of the moon. After a few minutes Jamie found ice on a puddle more interesting 🙂

This image was taken at 15.53 and according to my estimate from Starry night the moon is only 5′ above the horizon!

In this one a maybe 30 seconds later the moon is a little higher at around 9′ altitude.

In this one a maybe a minute later at 15.54 the moon is a little higher at around 13′ altitude.

All in all I was quite chuffed to capture the moon this low!

I captured 102 (keepers) images in the 13 minutes before the moon went behind the clouds, but I made an animation – a little jumpy to start with, but smoother towards the end.

… if I’m schizophrenic 🙂

Not only have I found a set of moon images that I didn’t know was on my PC, I’ve found a stacked sunspot shot as well.

Have no details on this at all, except it was taken I believe on March 29th 2011, the scope used was the ED80 with the DMK21, using a white light filter. Don’t think I used a barlow (mainly as I haven’t got one), but hey maybe my other personality (the one that does the imaging) has one!!!

Sun Spots in white light ED80/DMK21 March 21st 2011.