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6th January 2011 was clear until the clouds arrived in the early hours. So among other (ongoing) stuff I paid a visit to NGC 2392 - the 'Eskimo' nebula in Gemini. Seeing wasn't particularly good, so some fine detail lacking. But the Eskimo looks happy enough. Full field (full size) and cropped and rotated.
SBIG ST10 XME on 12" LX200ACF at f10. Luminance 20 x 2 minutes, RGB each 8 x 3 minutes. Longer exposures not possible (or really necessary!) because of blooming of the central star. |
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On the night of 7th February 2011 I had a look at the slightly distorted galaxy NGC 3893 in Ursa Major. Mediocre seeing and slightly hazy. SBIG ST10XME with AO-8 on 12" LX200ACF OTA at f10. Luminance 11 x 15 minutes, RGB each 6 x 10 minutes binned 2x2. There's a faint hint of an extended arm dropping down between 3893 and the smaller neighbour 3896. Maybe I'll have another go with longer subs given the opportunity. |
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This is the result of a challenge by Paul Jenkins! Small, faint and green. No, not Paul, but this interesting object next to the mag. 15 galaxy IC2497, beautifully imaged by the Hubble ST. And with more time I daresay I'd have a better image. But this will have to do for now. 26th February 2011. ST-10XME with AO-8 on 12" LX200ACF OTA at f10. 9 x 20 minutes Luminance, RGB each 4 x 10 minutes. A bit of passing cloud for some of the colour frames. Nice bright guide star, so the Luminance AO-8 rate was 11Hz - helped to overcome mediocre seeing. Full size. Full size crop, North is up, Need darker steadier skies and lots more time. In England? - fat chance! This image appeared in the May 2011 Astronomy Now magazine Gallery, and again as the April 2012 issue 'Deep Sky Challenge' |
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A late start on the night of 27th February, but several luminance subs captured before cloud rolled in. The next night starry but too hazy to image, but 1st March was a cracker until mist arrived at 4 am. Poor seeing on both nights, but good clarity and a bright guide star for this interesting galaxy, NGC 3938 in Ursa Major. Magnitude 10.4 but the outer regions are quite faint. The way the multiple spiral arms spread out into a hazy circle puts me in mind of a fisherman's net when it is flung with a twisting motion. SBIG ST10XME with AO-8 on 12" LX200ACF OTA at f10. Luminance 19 x 15 minutes, RGB each 6 x 10 minutes binned 2x2. |
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What a beautiful night on Sunday 13th March 2011. Wonderfully clear - a sky full of stars. Typical of course that it should be accompanied by a bright first quarter Moon. If only we'd had those conditions the previous Sunday at Kielder! I was out earlier, but when I got home set to with my ST-10 to get some luminance data, the idea being to use the colour from the Kielder one-shot-colour effort. And despite the bright Moon it came out quite well, helped by the excellent conditions and the position near the zenith. There's a pretty circlet of stars bottom right corner which I'd never noticed before. Luminance 13 x 10 minutes with the ST-10XME, colour 15 x 20 minutes with the ST-4000XCM in the misty condition last weekend at Kielder. All with the Meade 127 refractor. Full size |
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Alas light nights are fast approaching in April, particularly at my 55 degree latitude. The end of April is the last string of full dark nights (and then only for 2 or 3 hours) until the end of August. (Early August only an hour or so for a handful of nights). So unless the end of the month has some clear nights, that's the end of faint fuzzies for me for some time. But the night of 7th April 2011 was looking pretty good as the early high haze gradually faded. And I went for a very interesting galaxy, the starburst NGC 3310 (Arp 217) in Ursa Major. Almost at the zenith, so a good opportunity. Inspired by Adam Block's superb image, I set to. OK, I don't have a 32" 'scope, 9000 feet of altitude and Arizona sky, so can't really compete. But disappointingly the seeing was only around 5.5 fwhm, and even more annoyingly before I got any colour data, at 2 am the clouds rolled in. Scotland got some, there was a big fat one right over me. But the rest of England, Wales, Ireland, France and Spain were pristine. I don't beleeve it!! So I guess it's work in progress until early 2012. Anyway, here's what I did get. Not worth posting the full size. There are also some large 'doughnuts' in the image, possibly due to the bright 5th magnitude star out of frame at the top of the picture. It was an excellent guide star for the dual chip camera, but may end up ruining any chance of a better image. SBIG ST-10XME with AO-8, 12" LX200ACF at f10 on Gemini mount. 12 x 15 minute subs. |
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Added later! Fortunately the weather at the end of April relented, and over 5 nights I was able to get a lot more data for this interesting galaxy. Seeing improved, and although the sky was a little hazy on the night I obtained the colour frames, it came out ok - the bright starburst regions shone through the murk! Still slightly 'noisy', but that's the UK skies for you! The faint blue arc at the top of the image is definitely down to the bright star (a great guide star!) out of the frame. Luminance 12 x 15 minutes + 16 x 20 minutes. RGB each 6 x 10 minutes binned 2x2, optics as above. Full size This image appeared in the Astronomy Now June Facebook gallery |
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The last time I imaged the globular cluster Messier 3 in Canes Venatici was in June 2003 with my MX716 camera. Long overdue for a re visit. And the night of 12th April 2011 was nice and clear, so despite the brightening Moon the contrasty bright target wasn't unduly affected by the Moonlight. And a pleasant change for me from trying to tease out invisible structures around faint galaxies! SBIG ST-10XME with AO_8 on 12" LX200ACF OTA at f10. Luminance 12 x 5 minutes, RGB each 6 x 5 minutes. Full size This image appeared in the Astronomy Now June Facebook gallery |
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Magnitude 10.6 NGC 4651 (Arp 189) in Coma Berenices sports tidal tails both 'ends' of the galaxy, one in particular of a most interesting shape. I first saw an image of this here, and of course it prompted me to tackle it. What a struggle. I don't have New Mexico skies and 7000 feet of altitude! Although I had a run of fine weather, the nights towards the end of April 2011 were occasionally hazy, with only two or three really clear, and even then they sometimes clouded over early with an Easterly wind. And of course only 2 to 3 hours of full darkness to play with. Anyway, I eventually managed to capture 22 Luminance frames x 20 minutes and 6 each RGB x 10 minutes binned 2x2. SBIG ST10XME on 12" LX200ACF with AO-8 at f7. Some had to be scrapped due to passing cloud. And it seemed to be Clapham junction for bright satellites - no less than 3 Luminance and 3 colour subs were badly affected. And the tails were so faint that to show them meant a noisy final image and patchy colour. When I think of all the nice bright targets around....But here it is (full size), and one of the satellite subs (calibrated and reduced of course). |
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M71 in Sagitta was long a subject of discussion as to whether it is a globular or open cluster. But it would seem that the powers that be eventually decided it is a globular. Rather sparse, and not often imaged. BUT Comet P1 Garradd passed within 10 arc-minutes of its centre around 2300 UST (UK midnight) on Friday 26th August. A little to the right of the two bright stars at the middle of the left hand edge of this image. I was at the Dalby Forest star camp hoping for a clear night. Alas it was one of the wettest days and evenings of all the star camps over several years! But prior to that I realised I'd never myself imaged the globular, and the night of 22nd August 2011 was the first clear dark night for ages - at my latitude it was only then that I was back into full darkness, and there had been an awful lot of cloud around in recent weeks. With the presence of a bright last quarter Moon precluding faint fuzzies, and still limited time, I decided to image M71 to add to my collection. ST-10XME with AO-8 on 12" Meade LX200ACF at f7. Luminance 20 x 2 minutes, RGB each 8 x 2 minutes. Darks and Flats applied. North is left (I needed to position it that way for a bright guide star). Full size. |
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A bright supernova in Galaxy Messier 101 was first discovered on 25th August 2011 and brightened steadily over the ensuing weeks. I didn't hear about it until after I obtained the Comet Garradd image - I would have been after the SN as well, although the weather would probably have stopped me! And no more clear spells at night until 10th September by which time an almost full Moon was washing out the sky. Still clouds about and the target heading rapidly behind a neighbour's tree (to be felled a week later - yesss!). But I managed 9 x 5 minute monochrome subs, ST-10XME on the Meade 127. Same framing as my image in March 2011, and I was able to add colour from that image and produce a 'blinking' GIF. But much lower in the sky this time and the moonlight produced a low contrast washed out image. Still time for another go after the Moon is out of the way. Not worth a full size image. The SN is classified type 1a, named SN 2011fe. It reached a brightness between 9th and 10th magnitude - extremely powerful at the distance of M101 - approximately 24 million light years. |
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Data was collected for this image on two nights - 22nd (at Kelling Heath Star Party) and 28th September. This is Sharpless 101 - the 'Tulip' Nebula in Cygnus. Narrowband imaging with the ST-10 on the Meade 127 refractor. Luminance from Hydrogen-alpha, 25 x 5 minute sub frames. 10 minute subs would have been preferable, but the bright stars in the heart of the nebula bloomed badly at that exposure. RGB each Ha, OIII, SII, 9 x 5 minutes. North is up in this image. |
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The following night of 29th September was again clear although with slight mist. The larger nebula is Sharpless 157, also known as the 'Claw' nebula in Cassiopeia. The well known Bubble nebula (NGC7635) embedded within Sharpless 162 bottom left. Top left is Sharpless 158 (NGC7538) and centre left Sharpless 159. The bright cluster top centre is NGC 7510. Narrowband, ST10 on the Meade 80 refractor with 0.7 reducer. Luminance Ha 15 x 10 minutes, RGB each Ha, OIII,SII, 7 x 10 minutes. North is left in this image. |
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Here is Sharpless 199, the 'Soul' or 'Embryo' emission nebula in Cassiopeia, also showing the nearby smaller Sharpless 198 (below) and Sharpless 20 (left edge). The data was collected over 4 nights - notwithstanding narrow band the background was affected by moonlight, so I had to grab what I could before it rose too high. And of course our usual UK clouds limited the number of nights recently available. Final batch of data on October 19th 2011. SBIG ST-10XME camera, Canon 400L camera lens at approximately f7 with narrowband filters. Luminance 27 x 10 minutes Hydrogen-alpha, RGB each 7 x 10 minutes H-a, Oxygen III and Sulphur II. The camera lens was stopped down from f5.6 to approx. f7 using an external mask to prevent 'starburst' spikes. But if I had not used the mask I expect it would have looked something like this version - spikes added using Star Spikes Pro. The lens produces 8 point spikes, (see here) and on this occasion the artificial ones nicely mask those produced by the microlenses on the CCD chip, so it is the image I prefer. Full size (850KB). This image features in the 'Hotshots' section of the March 2012 'Sky at Night' magazine CD |
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NGC 6823 in Vulpecula is an open cluster with surrounding nebulosity and interesting dark lanes. The nebulosity is classified as Sharpless 86 and NGC 6820. But it proved to be elusive due to a run of very poor weather. For H-alpha I had 4 barely usable subs from Kielder on 28th October 2011. Then a further 12 in better conditions on 1st November. But I had to wait until 22nd November to get OIII and SII data. Not a very bright area, so still a bit noisy in the darker sections - needs more time in H-alpha. But that's it for this year! SBIG ST-10XME on Meade 127 refractor (950 mm fl). Luminance 12 x 20 minutes H-alpha, also used for Red. GB each 8 x 10 minutes OIII and SII binned 2x2. |
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