MarsG76

Centaurus A (NGC 5128) is a galaxy in the constellation of Centaurus. It was discovered in 1826 by Scottish astronomer James Dunlop from his home in Parramatta, in New South Wales, Australia. At 13 million LY, NGC 5128 is one of the closest radio galaxies to Earth and is also the fifth-brightest in the sky, making it an ideal amateur astronomy target. The galaxy is only visible from below very low northern latitudes but is best seen or imaged from the southern hemisphere. This image was taken with a NexStar 8SE 8" SCT at 2032mm focal length, PHD2 autoguided CGEM using a astronomy modded Canon 40D DSLR controlled by APT. It consists of 40 x 300 sec, 30 x 600 sec and 20 x 900 sec ISO800 subs.

A photo of Eta Carina and surrounding nebulosity close up in classic Hubble Palette style color. The Carina Nebula (NGC 3372) also known as the Grand Nebula, Great Nebula in Carina, or Eta Carinae Nebula, is a large complex area of bright and dark nebulosity in the constellation Carina. The nebula lies at an estimated distance between 6,500 and 10,000 light-years from Earth. This image was taken across 7 nights in March 2018 through 8nm bandwidth Sulfur II (SII), Hydrogen Alpha (HII) and Oxygen III (OIII) filters and combined where SII is used as the red channel, HII is as the green and OIII is as the blue channel. Taken using a 8" SCT at F10 with a self modded full spectrum Canon 40D DSLR. This image exposure time was a total of 30 hours , 24 x 900s and 16 x 1800s SII, 24 x 600s and 24 x 900s HII and 36 x 600s OIII ISO800 subs.

A photo of Eta Carina and surrounding nebulosity close up in natural color. The Carina Nebula (NGC 3372) also known as the Grand Nebula, Great Nebula in Carina, or Eta Carinae Nebula, is a large complex area of bright and dark nebulosity in the constellation Carina. The nebula lies at an estimated distance between 6,500 and 10,000 light-years from Earth. Taken using a 8" SCT at F10 with a self modded full spectrum Canon 40D DSLR. This image was exposed for a total of 180 minutes, 12 x 600s and 12 x 300s ISO800 subs on 12th March 2018.

This is NGC 1097 which is a barred spiral galaxy about 45 million light years away in the constellation Fornax. This Galaxy is a interacting galaxy with obvious tidal debris and distortions caused by interaction with the companion galaxy NGC 1097A. This image was taken with a Canon 40D DSLR, using a 8" SCT telescope at 2032mm focal length on a CGEM mount. I imaged this across four nights, but unfortunately the last 3 imaging nights we had a bush fire about 50km away and the sky was a little smokey so the end results could be (and most likely was) effected by the smoke. There is no hint of any jets, and I was stretching the stacked data specifically looking for it, but nothing... it might have been blocked by the smoke or my 40D is simply not sensitive enough to pick it up, or both.

This is another image This is the Jewel Box cluster which is located in the constellation CRUX. It is about 6400 light years away and also known as Kappa Crucis. The designation Kappa Crucis has been assigned to one of the stars in the base of the A-shaped asterism of the cluster. This image was taken with a stock Canon 40D DSLR through a 8" Schmidt Cassegrain telescope at 2032mm focal length. It consists of around 120 minutes of 60, 120 and 180 second subs at ISO400.

This is my next installment to continue with my goal to image southern objects. NGC 4833 is a globular cluster situated in the very southerly constellation "Musca" the fly and lies at a distance of 21,200 light years from Earth. It is partially obscured by a dusty region of the galactic plane which gave it a yellow/orange hue before color correction. After color correcting the reddening caused by the dust, the other star colors became a bit more obvious. This image was taken with a stock Canon 40D DSLR through a 8" Schmidt Cassegrain telescope at 2032mm focal length. It consists of around 120 minutes of 60, 120 and 180 second subs at ISO400.

About a month ago I started to image the Dragon Face nebula region, in accordance with my plan to image more southern sky objects which are rarely imaged by amateurs. This area is just north of the Tarantula nebula on the edge of the Large Magellanic Cloud, within a star dense area of the sky. The density of stars can be seen as this was imaged at 2032mm and still the stars are dense like noise where stars are more spaced apart in my images taken at this focal length. In the FOV there are a number of nebulae within this frame, namely NGC2032, NGC2035 and NGC2040 which make up the Dragons Face. There are also NGC2020 which is he blue swirl top left and NGC2014 is the red veil directly under it. There is also NGC2021 that is bottom center of the frame and a faintly visible NGC2053 which is bottom right frame under and to the back of the "dragon face". This was imaged over multiple nights in RGB and through HAlpha, Sulfur II and Oxygen III filters using a full spectrum modded uncooled Canon 40D DSLR. Honestly the amount of time spent on SII and OIII was not necessary and it was wasted imaging time, the strongest data was RGB and HAlpha, adding SII and OIII made almost no difference to the look of the image after stacking and processing...