Astrophotographers - a favour if I may?

[Darth Wader (Wade)]

I wonder if I might ask a small favour from one of the avid astrophotographers among us.

A good friend of mine from the UK lost her daughter during childbirth last year. As a memorial to her daughter (Abigail) a few of us "named" a star in her honour using a company based in America. My friend is back in Australia for a few weeks and I get to see her this coming Saturday. I thought it would be nice if I had a photo of the star (or even a field of stars in which I could identify hers) to give to her. I have the exact coordinates of the star (located in Virgo).

Is there anyone who might be able to help, depending on whether or not this is feasible? I'm not sure how it would work (if at all - I know almost nothing about astrophotography!) but I know my friend would love this and I would be forever in your debt.

Greatly appreciated!

Cheers
Wade

[erick (Eric)]

Have you located it on any star charts? Do you have a magnitude? That information would help people decide what they can do to help. Virgo is early morning at the moment - and with some Moonlight to wash out the sky at that time.

[Darth Wader (Wade)]

Haven't managed to yet - would I be able to find in Stellarium with the coordinates?

[Jen]

Awwwwww Wade that is so sweet, if i knew what i was doing i would love to help you. Im sure there is someone in here that can do it for you good luck

[TrevorW]

You should be able to locate it using Stellarium if you know it's constellation designation eg: Vir 10

[Octane (Humayun)]

They typically assign you a very high magnitude (read: faint) star to begin with.

Your best bet would be for someone to, rightfully, as you mentioned, grab the field of stars in the general area.


H

[Barrykgerdes]

Tell me the coordinates and I will give you a photograph of it. No bother as long as I know the coords J2000 (or whatever epoch).

Barry

[Darth Wader (Wade)]

Originally Posted by Jen

Awwwwww Wade that is so sweet, if i knew what i was doing i would love to help you. Im sure there is someone in here that can do it for you good luck

Aw, thanks Jen! I think my friend will love it.

Originally Posted by Barrykgerdes

Tell me the coordinates and I will give you a photograph of it. No bother as long as I know the coords J2000 (or whatever epoch).

Barry

Barry thou art indeed a top bloke.

The coordinates I was given are RA 13h47m5.06s D-08*0'9.90" (the * is a degree sign). I have no idea how to read these (the drawback of being an alt-az astronomer!) Hope this is enough info.

Thanks again mate.

Wade

[mithrandir (Andrew)]

Originally Posted by Darth Wader

The coordinates I was given are RA 13h47m5.06s D-08*0'9.90" (the * is a degree sign). I have no idea how to read these (the drawback of being an alt-az astronomer!) Hope this is enough info.

That's really close to being GSC 5546-222.

I can get a DSS image for that area out of CdC.

[DavidU (Dave)]

http://aladin.u-strasbg.fr/alapre.pl....90&button=RGB

Barry's a champ !

[mithrandir (Andrew)]

Originally Posted by DavidU

http://aladin.u-strasbg.fr/alapre.pl....90&button=RGB

Barry's a champ !

Think you have a typo David. It's 8d 0m 9.9s

http://aladin.u-strasbg.fr/alapre.pl....90&button=RGB


Which matches pretty closely the GSC-1.2 entry:

GSC 5546-222
Visual Magnitude: 13.55
Mag.band: 0
Class: 0
Multiple Flag: T
Photographic Plate: 03UY
Pos.error: 0.4
Mag.error: 0.4
Mean J2000 RA: 13h47m05.043s DE:-08°00'10.05"

Lightly editted DSS image with GSC 5546-222 in yellow.

[Darth Wader (Wade)]

Originally Posted by mithrandir

Think you have a typo David. It's 8d 0m 9.9s

http://aladin.u-strasbg.fr/alapre.pl....90&button=RGB


Which matches pretty closely the GSC-1.2 entry:

GSC 5546-222
Visual Magnitude: 13.55
Mag.band: 0
Class: 0
Multiple Flag: T
Photographic Plate: 03UY
Pos.error: 0.4
Mag.error: 0.4
Mean J2000 RA: 13h47m05.043s DE:-08°00'10.05"

Lightly editted DSS image with GSC 5546-222 in yellow.

Cheers Andrew - so do we know which star it is in the field? Sorry if this is a stupid question but I have no idea what's going on here now

[erick (Eric)]

Andrew made it yellow in his attached image. At the very centre. Too faint for Stellarium.

[Darth Wader (Wade)]

Ah, Ok... that's fantastic. Thank you all very much - I'm off to create some diffraction spikes in photoshop to make it stand out.

Cheers
Wade

[mithrandir (Andrew)]

Originally Posted by erick

Andrew made it yellow in his attached image. At the very centre. Too faint for Stellarium.

It was a bit more complex than that. As David did I could gave got the image from Aladin but this was more fun.

First I added the GSC-1.2 catalogs to the copy of Cartes du Ciel on this laptop. I wish I could get the UCAC3 catalogs to work but the GSC are close enough. My good computers were sitting in the middle of a puddle in the carpet from Saturday night's rain so I couldn't use them.

Then I told CdC to set the display to the coords Darth supplied and zoomed in until some stars appeared. Clicking on them I found the one that matched the given coords. I centred on that one and downloaded the DSS image.

Then fed the image to gimp, made the star yellow and saved as a JPG.

There are some slight diffraction spikes on the image. I can send the original FITS if someone wants to play more with it.

[DavidU (Dave)]

Nice work there Andrew.

[mithrandir (Andrew)]

Here are another couple. The first is a wide field of Virgo to get some context. The second is another version of my original with the equatorial grid overlaid.