With scarcely any hope for success, I set out to image UKS1 and during my research, I came across
this post on Ice In Space about the newly discovered globular cluster VVV GL001, discovered independently by Steve Crouch.
Using the images of Steve, John H (UKS 1) and the ESO Team, I plotted the field and it became apparent that with the Mewlon 210, Tak x0.8 Reducer/Flattener and SBIG ST2000XM, I had enough coverage to fit both GC’s in the same frame.
Thus began my adventure.
I managed to collect the following frames from Brisbane on the night of 31st July 2016:
90 secs each filter
3 minutes each filter
- 5 x Lum
- 1 x RGB
- 3 x IR807
This provided overall exposure times of:
- Lum 30 mins
- RGB 18 mins
- IR807 39 mins
After calibrating, aligning and stacking the frames in CCDStack, with some finishing in CS6, I am reasonably confident that I managed to detect these faint globulars using the Astronomik 807 IR Pass filter. The 1024x1024 pixel crop has been rotated 90 CCW to better match Steve’s more definitive image and that of the VISTA telescope/Digitized Sky Survey 2 image.
For reference, I have included a “Visible/infrared comparison views of the newly discovered globular cluster VVV CL001” Credit: ESO/D. Minniti/VVV Team and Digitized Sky Survey 2. Acknowledgement: Davide De Martin which can be located at:
https://www.eso.org/public/images/eso1141d/
Steve Crouch’s independent discovery images can be found here:
http://members.pcug.org.au/~stevec/u..._STL11K_RC.htm
http://members.pcug.org.au/~stevec/u...sta_GCL001.jpg
http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/s...ad.php?t=82032
John Hothersall’s image can be found here:
http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/s...ad.php?t=79587
My deep sky processing skills are not very advanced and in an attempt to tame the unsightly background chroma noise, I have been reasonably aggressive with noise reduction and setting the black point.
Cheers
Dennis
