M1 - a very very rough go

[Sam]

I thought I had collected mostly rubbish last night but I did have about 6 frames of 30 secs exposure of M1 that wasn't too wobbled up by the wind. I aligned them manually and added them together in Gimp 2.2 and here's the result - a lot more than I expected!

(click to enlarge)

It was done with a modded SPC 900NC (SC1) with the gain at about 75%, 6 X 30 secs exposures.

cheers

Sam

[Azelfafage]

Congrats on the pic - it may be rough, but it's recognisable - surprisingly big too :shock:

A

[thing]

I haven't even seen M1 yet...pointed at it a few times but seen zilch. Well done for even finding it never mind the image.

[Andrew*]

ME! ME! ME! I've seen it!! But I wouldn't suggest using anything smaller than an 8" on it unless your skies are excellent. Using averted vision I saw that "something" was there, and I'm afraid I can tell you little more than that!

I have to congratulate you on that image, lightbucket. I'm getting absolutely nowhere with my imaging, so I have to lift my hat to anyone who's got an image of e.g. M1, no matter how humble it may be.

Andrew

[blinky]

I have seen it too, through an 8" Newt. Very very faint, congrats on finding it!

[Sam]

Here's the one I stuck together from 5 X 40sec frames:

(click to enlarge)

Processed in GIMP 2.2 again. I think I can see a hint of red (might just be optimistic folly).

cheers

Sam

[thing]

Yeah I see some red in the NW corner there. I'm just back from a lecture at our local AS by Paul Money called Images of the Universe. There's some staggeringly beautiful stuff out there. I think there's a tendency to forget when you're 'heads down' trying to image or just see something just what it is you're looking at. The Moon gets me everytime, it goes back to when I was a teenager and the Apollo missions. Everytime I look at it I think 'We've walked there.' Amazing really. Plus I saw Titan for the first time the other night and I couldn't get away from the fact that we have a spacecraft on the surface of this tiny dot whirling around Saturn. We can do some clever stuff when we want to.

[CELESCOPE]

well done Sam , as you say , its there , not an easy one to get , so a good start for you , keep them coming

Rog

[Beyond_Vision]

Well done its quite a hard image to capture with is being a faint and small object.

Regards

Kevin

[thing]

Did you actually see it when you imaged it or did you do a precise align? ie did you trust your scope to know where it was or could you actually see it? I have an 8" Newt and try as I might I haven't caught a glimpse of it yet. To those that have seen it, is it best at low power or moderate? Should I be trying x25 or around x100? By the way, I wasn't being dismissive of your image, I'm just impressed that you found the blumming thing never mind got an actual image of it!

[Sam]

Thing

I could see it as a faint smudge on the 25mm and then on the 10mm. I found a star just off to the upper left and centered this. Then I put the camera on and focused on the star (that took a while because it was quite faint). I new then I would have to move the FOV up and to the left (about 2 secs on the up and left buttons at 8X on my HEQ5, I practiced that on the 6mm eyepiece before hand to judge it about right. I knew that with any luch I should see a smudge start to come into the FOV, and it did! This is what one of the frames I didn't use looked like, the smudge in the middle right is M1 (I deleted this because it was quite windy during the exposure):

(click to enlarge)

This is exactly what it looked like on the screen.

cheers

Sam

[thing]

Thanks Sam, it actually took me a few seconds to pick that out! I think the towel over the head and a clear night is required.

[LostNSpace]

Hi Sam

Great job in finding M1 in the 1st place and then managing to get some images.

Cheers

Mark

[Sam]

Thanks guys I pretty chuffed I got anything at all on the screen!

cheers

Sam