Abell 1367 (Leo Cluster)

[Martin Meredith]

Hot off the 'scope, here's a screenshot of the Abell galaxy cluster 1367 (thanks DragonMan Ken for the recommendation). This was timed to beat the fullish moon rising tonight. 

What's in the image? Well, a few hot pixels that the darks didn't catch, about a dozen stars, 3 or 4 dust bunnies. All the rest are galaxies. I haven't counted yet but I wouldn't be surprised if there's 40-50 in this single sub, taken at 80mm f/6 in 60s with the Lodestar-C via LodestarLive v0.8. Tomorrow I'll try to label it up but the bright spot just right of centre is NGC3842 and the vertical streak just above it is UGC 6697 (mag 13.6).

One change tonight was getting rid of the diagonal (only used in the past to achieve focus). I managed to rig up an extender. Its great to know these photons only had to encounter a doublet before hitting the CCD after travelling for a mere third of a billion light years.

Martin 

[Martin Meredith]

Here's the same shot labelled based on what I could spot here:

http://pw2.netcom.com/~ahighe/A1367_60_60F.jpg

and this is the result of stacking 8 x 60s subs in Nebulosity

There's a few more galaxies coming through.

For comparison, here's the Sloan DSS image

I am still missing a few though.... Is that a good excuse to save up for the more sensitive Lodestar?  

Tonight I'll give it another go under darker skies...

Martin

[Dragon Man]

Nicely done Martin!

That is a great image   

[Astrogate]

Martin Meredith, on 17 Apr 2014 - 07:42 AM, said:

Here's the same shot labelled based on what I could spot here:

http://pw2.netcom.com/~ahighe/A1367_60_60F.jpg

Abell_label.png

and this is the result of stacking 8 x 60s subs in Nebulosity

Abell_stacked.png

There's a few more galaxies coming through.

For comparison, here's the Sloan DSS image

Abell_SDSS.png

I am still missing a few though.... Is that a good excuse to save up for the more sensitive Lodestar?  

Tonight I'll give it another go under darker skies...

Martin

Very nice Martin!