Paramount
26-03-2010, 05:20 AM
Hi
Normally I don't do galaxies or star clusters as it involves RGB imaging and that is very difficult from where I live because of the light pollution but as the emission nebulae are moving out of target range for a couple of months I thought I would give this target a try as the sky was clear even though there was a half moon in the sky and gradually rising fog during the evening which eventually called a stop to proceedings at about 2am by which time you couldn't see any detail in the galaxy on the downloads. I took this with the the Takahashi FSQ106ED and Starlight Xpress SXVF M8C (OSC camera with 3.15 micron pixels), I managed to get 14x20 minutes (should have used longer subframes for this pixel size in hindsight) and it was taken through a clear filter (the luminance filter on my filter wheel), getting a guide star was pretty tricky using the OAG and I had to lengthen the guide exposures to 5 seconds binned 2x2 and even then the guide star was very faint, after crossing the meridian and doing a flip this was fine though as a brighter one was present. The image looks a bit soft and fuzzy which I suspect is partly due to the fog but this gives me something to aim for when I try it agan with the H9 and filters hopefully under better conditions. A full resolution image is available on one of my websites http://www.pbase.com/imaging_the_heavens
Thanks for looking
Best wishes
Gordon
Normally I don't do galaxies or star clusters as it involves RGB imaging and that is very difficult from where I live because of the light pollution but as the emission nebulae are moving out of target range for a couple of months I thought I would give this target a try as the sky was clear even though there was a half moon in the sky and gradually rising fog during the evening which eventually called a stop to proceedings at about 2am by which time you couldn't see any detail in the galaxy on the downloads. I took this with the the Takahashi FSQ106ED and Starlight Xpress SXVF M8C (OSC camera with 3.15 micron pixels), I managed to get 14x20 minutes (should have used longer subframes for this pixel size in hindsight) and it was taken through a clear filter (the luminance filter on my filter wheel), getting a guide star was pretty tricky using the OAG and I had to lengthen the guide exposures to 5 seconds binned 2x2 and even then the guide star was very faint, after crossing the meridian and doing a flip this was fine though as a brighter one was present. The image looks a bit soft and fuzzy which I suspect is partly due to the fog but this gives me something to aim for when I try it agan with the H9 and filters hopefully under better conditions. A full resolution image is available on one of my websites http://www.pbase.com/imaging_the_heavens
Thanks for looking
Best wishes
Gordon