Mike JW

PK69+3.1 (K3-46) in Cygnus is not an easy target and on my first attempt I failed to get it. Last night conditions were good enough to give it a go - success. It lies about 7,200 lyrs away and is thought to be about 20,000 years old. It has an hour glass shape with a bright equatorial ring. It is expanding much faster in the polar direction. It is easily missed in the concentrated star field - see my wide field image. North is up in both views. Mike

I would not waste my time or money on it. It only has 4.5" aperture. Buy a 8" Quattro Newt, appropriate mount and camera and still have money in your pocket, see much more and in more detail... Mike

Hi, wonderful shot and as you know I do enjoy the added information - makes it so much more worthwhile and informative. Interesting to note your use of the Baader filter - I have never thought to try that. Mike

Hi Achim - back to using the black charcoal and hey presto it goes 3D. Have fun. Mike

So much to see in the light summer skies. - many double stars of interest, globular clusters in Ophiuchus. Some of the best views of the Milky Way can be had in the summer months. We shall not have any true darkness now until early August. The sky will be darkest to the south so a good direction to look. I tend to go to bed early for a rest/sleep and then get up around 11.30 and enjoy a couple of hours observing. Moon sketching is fun on a warm summer evening for an hour or two after sunset. As has been said - astronomy is an all year activity. Mike

Hi Achim, nice idea to look at this obscure dorsum. I have spotted it in the past but not made the effort to properly observe it. Re not using charcoal - always good to try out new approaches but my first reaction is the lack of charcoal makes the sketch look flat. It lacks the 3D effect that you normally capture so well. Have fun, Mike

Hickson 69 found in Bootes is easy to miss because it lies in a wonderful galaxy field of obvious and distant faint galaxies. H 69 is a group of 4 galaxies with UGC 8842 (Sc -spiral) being the main galaxy. It is about 425 Gyr away. All four members lie at a similar distance. Actually all the obvious galaxies in this fov lie around the 400+ Gyr. Ignore the ASI 174 label (bug in the system) - I used the ultrastar. Mike

Just ask when/if you are uncertain of procedures, techniques....always helpful on this forum. Mike

Hi Peter The adventure begins and a nice first target to choose. Stacking improves the signal to noise ratio but after about 30 in the stack the improvement in the signal to noise ratio (that is the reduction in noise) significantly tails off. I rarely see much if any improvement beyond about 40 in a stack. The only time I might go beyond this is to bring out seriously faint galaxy features. Also assuming your mount does not track perfectly the longer the stack the less sharp the stars will be. When going for stars I will tend to use between 1 and 3 seconds for each sub and stop the stacking when I feel the stars are starting to loose sharpness or in the case of globulars you end up over exposing the core. Bahtinov Mask - absolutely essential. Why have you got elongated stars (coma) at the edges of your shot (before cropping)? I assume collimation is correct. For myself I use a C11 (use to use a C9.25) and if I attempt to push the focal reduction to F5.0 I start to get coma around the edges. I always use the Celestron f6.3 reducer and from experimenting with the distance from it to the chip sensor I can push it to f6.0 but faster than that coma starts to be noticed. Also you do need to have 100% focus (go get that Bahtinov Mask and the Celestron f6.3 focal reducer). As to the best 0.5 focal reducer - my feeling is they are all very similar (other folk with more expertise may be able to advise). Try 2 seconds and a stack of 30 !!!!!!! Have fun, Mike

Hi Bill, I took a look at the comet last night with the 15/ultrastar - similar image to yours (not posted). No particular advantage using a big scope for this comet. Mike

Last night my chance came to take a look at CRB with the 15. I actually looked at 7 Abell clusters. Abell 2065 - galaxies everywhere. Shot below to complement Martin's view. and here is a zoomed in view of the central part. Two of the objects indicated by the red lines are about mag 20. I suspect all the fuzz spots are galaxies. Forget the label that says ASI 174, it was the Ultrastar (not sure why that label has appeared) Mike

I have just had a look at the objects in CRB having been inspired by your Abell 2065. Plenty to track down. Mike

Fascinating - another one for the list. Mike

Whilst in Virgo last night I wandered down to M104, so here is the classic view of it (well somebody had to add it into this thread). and whilst I was in Virgo I went to M 60, (with its partner NGC 4649 is Arp 116). There appears to be uncertainty as to the distance to this pairing, even discussion as to whether 4649 is in front or behind M60. Mike

Hi Bill, you are quite right that M82 looks angry. I find it interesting to see colour but it sort of seems disappointing compared to non EEVA style colour shots.. M81 in colour does add to the feel/interest with its blue tint, indicating the abundant star formation. Mike

I have been going through my Ring Galaxy observations in Leo. NGC 3821 is a lovely example of an outer ring - (R)SAB (s)ab NGC 3646 is a beautiful spiral galaxy to view, with star forming regions - SA (r)bc pec I have also seen this galaxy classified as SO. Off to the right is PGC 36293 - what a The internal ring is partially hidden by a spiral arm from our perspective lovely barred spiral, SABb Mike

Interesting to experiment. Mike

Hi Bill, colour certainly adds interest. Mike

Most of my doubles observing, lunar sketching has been done with Mak Cass scopes - the benefit is they are compact, can give APO like views and you get more aperture.. The orion optics OMC 140 is only around the 4kg mark. I used a 5" APO refractor for awhile but sold it, preferring my OMC 200 (heavy) at the time. My current scope for doubles/lunar is a 7" MakCas, on an iOptron Mini Tower - easily grab and go. No simple solution. Mike

Hi Martin, Great idea to post a few of the Messier - never cease to fascinate me. As to Corryvreckan - I have felt the pull the currents of that monster on my boat and that was nowhere near the eye of the whirlpool. Mike

Hi Bill, what a lovely image. The sort of view that when it appears on the screen I go 'wow' and sit back and enjoy it. I shall put this one onto my Virgo list. Mike

Uncanny resemblance and a good shot showing the key details. Mike

Here are a couple of Arps from Leo. Arp 5 a pair of galaxies that lie about 80 million lyrs away, Arp classified this as a low surface brightness spiral. It is also VV 251, designation PKdf = pair in contact with disrupted facade (messed up). NED = SB(s)m pec, it is a small galaxy and severely disrupted by the merger process. Arp 87. This pair are 349 million lyrs away. Classified as SAB(rs)c; pec and is actually in the process of forming a polar ring. Arp classified this pair as spiral with large high surface brightness companion on arm. Also known as VV 300 and given the PD designation (distant pair). Mike

Thanks Martin for adding in the extra info. Even better that I got a 'spot one, get one free' - I had not thought to check if it was also a SHK. If it wasn't such a faff, I could have taken the camera out and popped in an eyepiece to enjoy these stars visually (would have to wait a few minutes to dark adapt). Below is the full fov - what an interesting area - all sorts of faint stuff lurking. Mike

I visited a few more PCGs a night or two later in Coma. PCG 123002+273422 - there they are lurking in the line of stars - lovely sight. PCG 123439+234951 is a delightful group of galaxies in the centre of the fov.