Planetary in M46

p medcraft · #1 29-01-2006, 10:04 PM

This is one of my favorite visual objects, nice color when imaged.
Only about 4 minutes total exposure due to some dud images. Taken friday night 27 January at Bullsbrook in Perth.
300D with a 14" Celestron Schmidt cassegrain

Roger Davis · #2 31-01-2006, 08:23 AM

Well captured Paul.
Sorry didn't check out the post earlier.
Not an easy planetary to spot, looks like a watermark (you remember those on 'real' photos?).

davidpretorius · #3 31-01-2006, 08:34 AM

boy that is faint, i had to use averted vision on the laptop screen.

great capture, well done!

janoskiss (Steve H) · #4 31-01-2006, 09:08 AM

This is a good one tucked away in that cluster. First I saw it I was ecstatic because it was not on my charts. At low power, one of the stars in there did not seem to want to focus. Up the power and wow it's a planetary! I can make out the ring shape in my 8" with my HD orthos (don't try this with Naglers! just not enough throughput.)

Very nicely captured P Med.

RB (Andrew) · #5 31-01-2006, 09:08 AM

Paul that's terrific thanks for sharing that.
Could you post some details of the shots used, ISO, exposures, etc.
I'd like to have a look at this one, I love these planetary shots.

Cheers

David_P - I find if you get your eyes dark adapted first, it helps with the averted vision. LOL.

davidpretorius · #6 31-01-2006, 09:12 AM

thanks andrew, i will hold my hands over my eyes and count to 20 and then open then up and view again : 1...2...3...4......

Thanks steve, i would not have thought to even try and look for this one (thought it was only a imaging object), but now i will... excellent.. i might get to see my first two planetaries in one week!

janoskiss (Steve H) · #7 31-01-2006, 09:42 AM

Davo, under dark skies, it should be easy in your 10". You need to up the mag though, otherwise it's not hard to miss. Just look for the fuzzy star at low mag. If you're still using Andrews 500s that could make things difficult. It is quite amazing how much more I can see with my HD orthos compared with the old GS Plossl, or Stratus and Nagler even.

p medcraft · #8 01-02-2006, 01:31 AM

ISO 1600, four 1 minute exposures, I was imaging on a concrete pad and although the tracking was good it was amazing how many were blown. A 14" at 6.9 means that my margin for error is virtually nil with an image scal of 0.63 arc seconds per pixel