Webb's little friend

[petevasey]

Hi, Guys,

I expect most of us have marvelled at the recently released JWST alignment evaluation image.  The telescope is really starting to show that it is worth the billions spent on it.  There are a couple of good Youtube videos - one from NASA here , and a  well presented one about the alignment process here.  Worth watching!  It identifies the subject star - a relatively nondescript star in Draco.  In fact the guy is quite dismissive of it.  But as a challenge I looked it up, in Skymap anyway it is listed in the Tycho catalogue as mag 10.96 TYC 4212-1079-1.  And yes, pretty unremarkable.  Interestingly it is only 50 arc-minutes south of the Cat's Eye nebula, NGC 6543.

So before this little star fades into distant memory, I thought I'd have a go at imaging it.  Result attached with a few nearby objects also annotated.  A set of 5 minute subs taken with my QSI 683 on my Meade 127 refractor, so at that 950 mm focal length of course there is no detail possible of the Cat's Eye.  But little TYC 4212-1079-1 is not forgotten 🙂  Also interesting and a demonstration of how powerful the JWST is with its massive 6.5 metre mirror is to compare its image with the one from my 0.127 metre refractor lens.

Both images attached.

Cheers,

Peter

 

Edited March 28, 2022 by petevasey

[Mr Spock]

Nicely done 👍

[tomato]

That’s an interesting exercise. I wonder if the HST has imaged the same star at some point, it would be good to compare the JWST star test image with a longer integration from Hubble to see how many of those distant galaxies were picked up in the visible wavelengths.

[gorann]

Cool! I wonder if six starspikes will now be the new fashion among those that like starspikes😁

[petevasey]

On 29/03/2022 at 08:12, gorann said:

Cool! I wonder if six starspikes will now be the new fashion among those that like starspikes😁

Who knows.  If that's the case, with a longer exposure my image might look like the attached 😉

Cheers,

Peter