Longmore 5

[sjastro]

Discovered in 1976, this very faint planetary came out reasonably well in colour, a testimony to the ST-10XME.

http://users.westconnect.com.au/~sjastro/long5c.html

Clear skies and a Happy Easter.

Steven
http://users.westconnect.com.au/~sjastro/small

[dcalleja]

Steven
It looks like a real faint one! Nicely imaged - I think the pink areas to either side are caused by jets in the PN (or at least thats what I read).

Couldn't find much on the web about this PN. Blackskies had a reference and Hartung lists it as real faint and needing a 30cm to even get a glimpse

[Matty P]

Great capture Steven on a very faint PN. Being able to capture some colour demonstrates how powerful the camera really is.

Very well done.

[h0ughy]

fantastic shot Steve - wow you have captured some faint galaxies in the background as well. That is definitely a trophy image, one for the bar room. I wonder if Scott Alder has seen this - he is a complete planetary nut.

as an aside - do you have some details and more pictures of your observatory you could post onsite or email me?

[Bassnut]

wow, such an unusual shot Steve. A nice change and a pleasure to view.

[sjastro]

Thanks H0ughy.

I have been impressed with Scott's planetary images, particularly Abell 12.

The Observatory is a very simple cheap and nasty design. It is on a 2.1 X 2.1 metre concrete slab base. The north side (door side) is 1.7 metres tall and the south side is 1.4 metres. It is high enough to screen the telescope from wind buffering yet provide good access to the sky. The roof is two separate components which are hinged and opened via a flip top design. The corrugated roof is coated with an aluminium reflective paint to minimize heat build up inside. I needed to make sure I wasn't violating any aviation codes as my observatory is under a flight path!

It looks more like a cubby house than an observatory.

Regards

Steven

[sjastro]

Thanks Fred, H0ughy, Matty P and Dan for your comments.

Happy Easter.

Steven

[Bassnut]

Steven

Your OBs looks more than adequite. Thru hard experience the KISS principle works well :D.

[Ric]

Hi Steven, that is a wonderful capture of an amazing planetary. It gives the impression of a bubble floating in space.

Cheers

[strongmanmike]

Another fine image Steve, natural looking, delicate and no sign of image processing. Your processing techniques have improved recently, if I may say, in the past your images often had a processed unatural look to them, what are you doing differently now?

Mike

[Alchemy]

lovely bit of work you have produced there, very hubbleish.

to me it looks like a raspberry donut with large yellow and blue sprinkles......(how very scientific hehe)

[tornado33]

Fantastic work Steve, that is a VERY faint object yet youve captured so much detail. The blue central star is striking too.
Scott

[sjastro]

Thanks Mike.

The major difference these days is that I finally have the optics and CCD sorted out. If the raw data is bad, and you are trying to process out the defects, the end result is never satisfactory.

Recently I decided to image all my RGBs unbinned. That has made a definite difference with regards to preserving star colour. I have also given up on using deconvolution.

Regards

Steven

[sjastro]

There is one pitfall Fred. A strong westerly can flip the roof back into a closed position. I found out the hard way as I was brained while setting up an imaging session. Fortunately my head saved the optics.:scared:

Steven

[sjastro]

Thanks to Ric, Mike, Alchemy and Scott for your kind comments.

Clear skies

Steven

[Terry B]

:rofl:
Lucky optics

[Bassnut]

Steven. Tell me about it, wind was my downfall :P. Murphys law wins every time.

[2020BC]

Nice one, Stephen,

I've just had a look at your website, and the quality of the images there is top class.

Folks, if you haven't had a look at his website you should take a look. Simply stunning images some of them.:eyepop:

[seeker372011]

LOL

Steve

I have long admired your fine work, especially in unearthing obscure Southern objects that most others have never heard of-found your web site through Ted Dobosz's site years ago

I regularly visit your site to find imaging targets..though my results maybe far from yours in quality

keep 'em coming

Narayan

[iceman]

Wow, beautiful image. Stunning result.

[sjastro]

Thanks Mike, Narayan and Bill.

Clear skies
Steven
http://users.westconnect.com.au/~sjastro/small

[sjastro]

I use Hartungs "Astronomical Objects for Southern Telescopes" as a reference source.

If the objects sounds interesting I will download the image from
http://ledas-www.star.le.ac.uk/DSSimage/ to decide whether it is worth imaging.

Regards

Steven