Deepsky results from France, summer 2010

[mftoet]

Friends and I of the Dutch "society of astrophotography" (vereniging astrofotografie) stayed at Les Granges, Etoile St. Cyrice last week. The first half of the week the skies were clear and transparant. The second half of the week haze and high clouds spoiled our astrophotography activities. Nevertheless we had great fun watching the Perseids.

The telescope I brought was an INTES 15 cm f/6 Photomak. The Mak is a Sigler design, meaning the secondary mirror (50% obstruction) is positioned halfway the tube in spidervanes. That causes spikes around bright stars, but I like them and gave thought to them while framing my images. I turns out the collimation of the Mak wasn't spot on. Therefore some stars show three singular spikes and one double spike and not all the stars in the field are as sharp as they could get. Because it's rather difficult to collimate the Mak in the field, I decided not to ruin my astro-holiday on tweaking the telescope.

Although we would like to have at least another clear night, I'm happy with my results. Of course with digital imaging it's always possible to gather extra data to add at a later moment. So see you soon Olly. ;-)

# Van den Bergh 152

# Lynds Dark Nebula 673

# M20, Trifid Nebula

# NGC 891 and friends

# Van den Bergh 141, Ghost Nebula

[peter shah]

a superb set of images, real top class, the ghost nebula is one on my to do list and your vdb-152 is very deep......just stunning! beautifully processed not over done at all

[daz]

Could we ask that you include the images in the post please.

Many thanks

[Keiran]

Hi Olly,

It sounds like it was a great time other than the second week, but hey never mind...

Im thinking of taking my setup across to holland at the end of the month... And im also thinking of going camping more offen with it, there is nothing else like it i think.

Your images are relly top class.VDB152 tooks stunning, but my fav has to be NGC891... It is just stunning, and there are so many little fuzzys around there.

Thanks for sharing

keiran

[mftoet]

Thanks for the comments.

Peter, I noticed on your website that you also have a nice LDN 673. It is a not so often photographed object.

Regards,

[peter shah]

yes...its still unfinished work it needs alot more exposure time......im missing quite a bit in the blue channel.....it sits quite low down often in the muck....ill get back to it at some point;)