What a night. M51,63,81,82,94,106 and 109 in the bag.

[steelfixer]

It is now near enough 4 in the morning and I am still buzzing.

I have never had such a night in my short astro gazing life.

My trusty old Samsung video camera has done me proud tonight.

I have had a field day with new galaxies.

I started off with M82 (got it right this time) moved across to M81.

From there I found M51 the first clear view of a sprial galaxy I have ever seen.

After shooting 8000 frames of M51 I moved on to M94.

I rounded the night off with M106 and M109.

I did try to get M100 but the clouds beat me to it.

I dont know why but for some reason the videos have come out a bit on the dark side when I put them through Registax but I have posted up the finished photos anyway.

I am now in the process of putting an AVI of M51 through DSS in the hope it will come out as clearly as it was on my monitor.

I hope you enjoy these photo because I cetainly enjoyed taking them.

Graham

PS I have just added the DSS version of M51

[Zul]

Lucky night

[NickK]

8000 frames with a 383 would be 136GB!

I think the biggest improvement would be a slightly better polar alignment as this would aid the clarity and bring out the detail further!

I love this sort of astronomy

[JohnC64]

Wow Graham - What a Session!!! 7 Targets in one night. I especially like your M82 and M51 images.

Cheers John

[steelfixer]

Thanks people.

It rearly was a brilliant session.

Nick the 8000 frames was 8 x 1000 frame AVI's.

Interesting point regarding the Polar alignment.

I need to do another drift align, mind saying that was pretty windy here last night and all of these are unguided.

John M51 realy blew me away, like I said it is the first time I have seen a spiral galaxy in detail.

Graham

[Quatermass]

Well done steelfixer what a great night you had. I was out there buzzing around Leo finding some of the fainter galaxy's but the wind put paid to any good images. It was just fun to find them with the camera much quicker then trying to see them with my telescope lenses. Amazing just how many there are out there when you start looking for them. The wind is going to be a major pain the next few nights think I might have to buy 3 fence panels and make myself a telescope wind breaker.

[steelfixer]

Quatermass your not wrong there, it was pretty blustery last night.

I did discover a new trick though.

When trying to locate a galaxy I found that if you put this Samaung onto 64x intigration and set the contrast and the brightness levels very high so the image on the screen is nearly white the galaxies stand out like a sore thumb.

thanks

Graham

[Quatermass]

I had a frustrating time of it but the reason for it was that my step son had lifted my telescope of the chair after I had cleaned it and carefully colminiated it. He dumped it down on the carpet the plonker and so when I went out with it and put it back on my scope little did I know that the colmination and the finder scope were completly out grrrr.

SO I spent ages wondering why I was getting subs like this one

Lesson learned dont let ANY ONE touch your telescope after you have cleaned it and got everything sorted. Went out this morning after loading the pics I took last night to check the colmination it was a good half inch out of alignment! No wonder I could not get a decent sub. Thought my scope had become cursed or something. Never mind all is well now and tonight though a bit windy is going to be nice and clear.

[steelfixer]

Now that has got to be frustrating.

Hope it goes better for you tonight.

[Quatermass]

Tonights looking good

Sent from my GT-S5670 using Tapatalk

[KE400]

Sounded like a great night Steelfixer

May I ask what your settings where with your SBC 2000 as I have a Samsung 4000 and have only really viewed Jupiter with it while messing around with the settings. I would love to see what kind of results I might get on those targets you achieved too.

Thanks

[steelfixer]

Hi Kevin.

I start with the intigration set at 64X.

Contrast on max and the brightness pushed up until the image on the moniter is a light grey.

Once the galaxy is located set the intigration up to 256X.

Then back the brightness right down and control the image with the contrast.

I have the hue set midway which is just to the lower end of red.

The saturation I adjust until there is a slight hint of colour.

The main settings are as follows.

Lens - manual

Sens up - auto 256x

White balance - manual red - 473 blue - 510

It is best to play around with the colour settings in daylight to find what is best for your individual camera.

I am using ezycap for the convertion and Sharpcap for the capture.

I hope this helps.

Thanks

Graham

[West End Wendy]

Nice one Graham - those images are proof of a great night.

I remember feeling the same way after a summer night last year in which I saw Veil, the North American Nebula the Crescent and comet Garradd using the Samsung. You know they're all up there but until you see them live with your own eyes...

Tim

[KE400]

Graham

Thanks, that's exactly the info I was after, hopefully tonight I can give it a whirl and hopefully get some results. Would be really pleased with seeing one of your images from the other night.

[steelfixer]

Wendy - Thanks it was a great night problem is I now want to better it.lol

Kevin - No problem let me know how you get on.