Galaxies and a Globular

[Paul81]

New gear arrived yesterday (an ASI120mm for some planetary work) so it was an unexpected nice clear evening and morning! New gear guarantees cloud!!

Spent time last night grabbing images of Jupiter, and this morning the Moon and Saturn, but whilst waiting for the scope to fully cool I decided to make the most of a nice morning by going DSO hunting in Canes Venatici.

I had finished aligning up the mount on Arcturus so grabbed a quickie M3 to start:

Next up was M51 the Whirlpool Galaxy. This is another massive favourite of mine, both visually and in images. I always wonder what it might be like living in a galaxy undergoing such a merger. Probably nothing drastic as these things take millions of years.. but hey doesn't stop my imagination...

Nearby is M63 the Sunflower galaxy so it would have been rude not to..

And finally NGC4631 the Whale Galaxy, a galaxy that I think does live up to its name!

In such a galaxy rich area there was so much more I was tempted to look at but Saturn was starting to get dangerously near my neighbours roof so decided the scope was cooled enough.

All exposures using an SX Lodestar mono with an Astronomik CLS filter. All images were taken and processed using Lodestar Live software, what is posted here is what I was viewing live at the scope. Everything is a single 30 second exposure, with dark frame subtraction applied.

I have a full colour version of Lodestar Live now - just testing a few bits this afternoon / tomorrow morning to find any obvious glitches and then it will be out to the usual suspects. Looking forward to seeing peoples results in full colour! Now I have the ASI120mm although not on my current roadmap to integrate it with Lodestar Live it may not be out of the question down the road. A much higher priority is to incorporate the stacking algorithm, I am really looking forward to unleashing that on some galaxy shots!

[nytecam]

Excellent results Paul - well done. We await your colour Lodestar results soon :-)

[Martin Meredith]

Lovely stuff!

Makes me all the more eager to get the mount delivered (I believe it is currently on a ship bound for Iberia...) It's promised by early March at which point I'll be putting Lodestar Live (Colour) through its paces. Can't wait! And stacking will be a great addition.

Martin

[Astrogate]

Very nice single images captured with your Lodestar C Paul! Does your Lodestar software have a live stacking feature? If so this would be great esp. on the galaxies to improve the signal to noise ratio which will help smoothen out the grainy background look.

Chris A

Astrogate

[Astrogate]

Sorry Paul, I just read your write up and you mentioned that your working on creating algorithm for live stacking - very cool. Also you used for the images a Lodestar mono not C. I am looking forward to seeing more live images for you guy's who use these very capable Lodestar cameras (stacked and in colour).

Cheers,

Chris A

[Astrogate]

Sorry Paul, I just read your write up and you mentioned that your working on creating algorithm for live stacking - very cool. Also you used for the images a Lodestar mono not C. I am looking forward to seeing more live images for you guy's who use these very capable Lodestar cameras (stacked and in colour).

Cheers,

Chris A

sorry that was supposed to say from you guy's not for. Is there a way one can edited their mistakes on this site? Thank you

Chris A

[allcart]

The editing feature is related to post count chris. Not sure how many you need, but keep posting and you will get there.