lukebl

Thanks folks. I was skulking around my neighbour's orchard at 4am to get these pics. I think I got away with it!

Insomnia at 3.30 this morning, so I thought I may as well get up. I'm glad I did. The skies were marvellous here in Norfolk, as I watched the setting eclipsed moon as the sun rose. Canon 700d. Canon EF 75-300mm zoom.

So someone’s managed to grow some cress (albeit not very well, and with the help of some fertiliser and water) in some valuable moon dust. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/may/12/cress-seeds-grown-in-moon-dust-raise-hopes-for-lunar-crops What a daft exercise. Hey, I can grow cress on a damp kitchen towel! With hydroponics there’s no need for soil anyway.

Any idea where the extra diffraction spike in this highly cropped image is coming from? The fainter one running at 45 degrees from top left to bottom right of the bright star. It's a 250PDS f.4.8 Skywatcher Newt, with a Baader coma corrector and an Atik 383L+.

This is a magnificent sweep of galaxies in Boötes. Zoom in and you'll see literally hundreds of galaxies here of all types. In the centre is the face-on spiral NGC5435 with its companion edge-on spiral NGC5434B or UGC08967. The brighter members of this group are apparently 250 million light years distant. There are some quasars here over 11 mly distant. The bright star at the bottom is 6th magnitude HD122563, 773 light years distant. I captured the luminance on 26th April, and was despairing of getting any colour due to moon, clouds and the oncoming permanent twilight, but managed to capture enough R & B last night to give it a flush of colour. Captured using an Atik 383L+, 250mm f/4.8 Newt. 45 x 300s exposures luminance, 15 x 180s R & B binned 2x, synthetic green channel. Stacked in ASTAP, processed in Photoshop. Field of view 51.6 x 38.9 arcmins. 0.924 arcsec/pixel. According to ASTAP, I've captured objects down to about mag 21 here. Labelled:

It’s worth noting that you can go well beyond the meridian without needing a flip. In fact, I have never bothered with the hassle of doing a flip. I often image a subject until it’s, say, 2 or even 3 hours beyond the meridian and it’s usually fine. Recently I’ve been choosing objects which transit at about midnight UT, and stop imaging (automatically, as I’m not naturally a night owl!) at around 3. This’ll give me potentially 4-5 hours of capturing time at this time of year.

Many thanks! There was some inevitable star trailing with 4 sec exposure on a fixed tripod, but I think it worked out quite well. I thought that the Pleiades would be lost in the horizon haze and high cloud, so was pleased that they were bright and clearly visible.

A lovely view of Mercury this evening, close to The Pleiades. Mercury was at an altitude of around 7 degrees here, and about magnitude +0.4. Canon 700d, 70-300mm zoom @ 110mm, f/5.6, 4 seconds, ISO800. Banham, Norfolk

Here's an interesting little string of galaxies in Virgo, viewed from a different perspective. Sometimes the reverse image can appear to show better detail. To my eyes, the lovely barred spiral NGC 5850 (c. 130 Mly distant) at the top looks more pleasing in reverse (it looks like the eye of a frog to me!). The others here are the elliptical galaxy NGC 5846 and 5846A below it, NGC5845 below them and 5839 at the bottom. Near the right edge is the spiral galaxy NGC5848, with many fainter distant galaxies around. 60 x 300s exposures, ATIL 383L+, 250PDS Newtonian. Stacked in ASTAP. Field of view 51.5 x 38.7 arcmin. 0.924 arcsec/pixel. Labelled:

Here is a lovely group of galaxies in Virgo, the jewel being the lovely spiral NGC5364 at upper left, discovered by William Herschel on February 2 1786. To its lower right is NGC5363, a lenticular galaxy, c 60 million light-years distant. Near the bottom is the spiral galaxy NGC5356. The bright star to the right of NGC5363 is 8th magnitude HD121605. Captured using an Atik 383L+, 250mm f/4.8 Newt. 67 x 300s exposures luminance, 20 x 120s R & B binned 2x, synthetic green channel. Stacked in ASTAP, processed in Photoshop. Field of view 50.6 x 37.7 arcmins. 0.922 arcsec/pixel

Herewith my offering of Messier 100 (NGC4321) and friends, a 'grand design' intermediate spiral galaxy Coma Berenices, one of the brightest and largest galaxies in the Virgo Cluster and is approximately 55 million light-years distant. Atik 383L+, 250mm f/4.8 Newt. 58 x 300s exposures luminance, 20 x 120s R & B binned 2x, synthetic green channel. Captured over the nights of 24/25, 27/28 March and 1/2 April 2022.

Thanks for that tip. Never heard of that Plugin before. I've just given it a try and it's a complete game-changer! As you say, WAAAAY better than GradientXterminator. It's particularly good at uneven and blotchy gradients, which GradientXterminator can't deal with.

I’ll probably wind everyone up with this question, but it is a genuine puzzle to me. Why is it that when folk buy an 8 or 10” SCT, with a focal ratio of say f/8 or f/10, they immediately slap on a focal reducer to bring down the focal ratio and focal length for imaging? I know that it’s partly to reduce aberrations when imaging, but if the focal length is too much, why not just get something with a native lower focal ratio and length in the first place, like a Newtonian? Cheaper, too. I’ve owned SCTs myself, mainly to capture smaller DSOs and planetary detail so I’m not anti-SCT, but it always struck me that adding a focal reducer defeats the whole advantage of havIng the longer FL. Which is why I went back to Newtonians. Much simpler and more logical. Now strike me down…

Here's a nice little trio of edge-on galaxies in the Virgo cluster. From left to right, NGC4206, NGC4216, and NGC4222 plus a myriad of fainter galaxies. Atik 383L+, 250mm f/4.8 Newt. 64 x 300s exposures luminance, 20 x 120s R & B binned 2x, synthetic green channel. Annotated:

I asked myself the same question! Surely ‘they’ can’t be checking the redshift of every object in the sky?

The Twin Quasar Q0957+651 is an amazing object in Ursa Major, and surprisingly easy to capture. The first discovered example of gravitational lensing as theorised by Einstein. It's apparently 8.7 Billion Light Years away (174 times more distant than the galaxy NGC3079 in this pic), and the gravitational lensing effect caused by an intervening (unseen) galaxy results in the light taking two paths either side. The single quasar thus appears as two separate points of light, separated by 6 arcseconds. The A component has a magnitude of 16.7 and the B component 16.5. There is a 417 time lag between the two images as one of them has a longer light path! Captured over three nights with an Atik 383L+, 250mm f/4.8 Newt. 52 x 300s exposures luminance, 18 x 300s R & B binned 2x, synthetic green channel, 12 x 600s HA binned 2x

Here'e my entry into the Galaxy Clusters. This is an interesting group around the barred spiral NGC3079 in Ursa Major, with the brightest being PGC028990 and NGC3073 below it and a whole array of faint galaxies around. NGC 3079 is spewing out a huge hot bubble of particles in the centre detected by the Hubble ST. I tried to capture it in HA, but I suspect it needs a LOT of exposure time. What's most interesting, though, is to the lower right of the galaxy, something which appears to be a double star with a separation of 6 arcseconds. It is, in fact, the so-called Twin Quasar, a double image of the same massive object created by gravitational lensing, a result from gravitational lensing caused by the galaxy YGKOW G1 that is located directly between Earth and the quasar. The first to be discovered (in 1979) and my first. The foreground galaxy has bent space and forced the quasar’s light to take two separate routes to reach us. These individual light paths travel on different sides of the foreground galaxy so that one traverses extra mileage. Thus, any flickering or change in one image of the quasar is followed by the same change in the other image 417 days later. Apparently 174 times further from us than NGC3079, 8.7 billion light years away! Atik 383L+, 250mm f/4.8 Newt. 52 x 300s exposures luminance, 18 x 300s R & B binned 2x, synthetic green channel, 12 x 600s HA binned 2x here it is annotated

Asteroid 44 Nysa.

Not bad! Venus doesn't even manage to clear the obstructions in front of my obs at the moment. My expensive U filter ain't much use right now!

I’ve been trawling various auction sites in search of a 10 or 12 inch SCT, and stumbled across this 10” Meade It allegedly belonged to Paul and Linda McCartney. I was interested at first, but it’s clearly a very old model, and looks a bit ropey. Might be of interest to a fan! Quite a low guide price for a bit of Macca memorabilia. https://bid.omegaauctions.co.uk/auction/lot/lot-226---paul-and-linda-mccartney-owned-lx50-telescope/?lot=19696&so=0&st=&sto=0&au=57&ef=&et=&ic=False&sd=0&pp=48&pn=5&g=1#

A couple of weeks ago I posted a capture of M101. Far from perfect, but for me one of my most satisfying images. Last night I captured some HA, and it positively spark!es now! ATIK 383L+, 200PDS Newtonian. 65 x 5 minute exposures Luminance. Just 22 x 2 minute exposures for R & B, binned 2x. Sythesised Green channel. 40 x 10 minutes of HA, 2x binned Original, minus HA

The distinctive blue-painted wood of my late Tardis now all cut up and helping to keep me warm during the current fuel crisis!

I'd highly recommend the free stacking and photometry software ASTAP. Not only does it stack images really well and quickly, it will plate solve and label your image with details such as asteroids, comets, magnitudes, deep sky objects. Here's your image with all the DSOs labelled. Yours is a lovely image!

I rarely do any imaging these days and rashly sold off a lot of my astro gear, so I'm pretty rusty. However, I'm getting my mojo back and captured this image of M101 The Pinwheel over the past couple of nights, and I'm reasonably pleased with it considering. Captured with an ATIK 383L+, 200PDS Newtonian. 65 x 5 minute exposures Luminance. Just 22 x 2 minute exposures for R & B, binned 2x. Sythesised Green channel, which seems to have worked fairly well. Processed using ASTAP for the first time, which I must say is a vast improvement on DSS. Images seem to suffer far less from gradients with it. And it's much faster. Here it is with all the galaxies labelled using the neat astrometry function of ASTAP. It's telling me that I've captured some objects down to about mag 21.

Whoops! Sorry. Found it. Working now!