May 2013 - Spring Globular Clusters:

The beginning of May provided two beautiful warm & clear nights. May 1st & 3rd were dedicated to imaging Globular Clusters M3 and M13. Both nights were perfect for sitting back in my lawn chair and gazing into the starry blackness above!
I should mention: Some of the bonus darkness I enjoy at home is courtesy of a kind and supportive neighbour! When she sees me out setting up my telescope, she makes sure all her outside lights and yard light are shut off for the night. You can't beat neighbours like that!!
I shot both clusters with the same settings, under the same "seeing" conditions, same exposure times and an equal frame size. This provides a direct visual comparison of these two giant star clusters from our distant perspective here on Earth. Both of these clusters are roughly 90 light years diameter but M3 has a hard time competing with M13, as it rests 33,900 light years away. M13 is much closer at only 25,100 light years. M3 may lose a little in quality, but it makes up for it in quantity: M3 has 500,000 stars while M13 only holds 300,000 stars!
Close examination of both clusters reveal a colourful array of bluish to orangey stars.
Look for many 'small' distant galaxies in the peripheral as well.



M3 - Globular Star Cluster in Canes Venatici - 40 x 2.5min exposures = 1hr 40min total exposure @ 800iso

M13 - Globular Star Cluster in Hercules - 40 x 2.5min exposures = 1hr 40mins total exposure @ 800iso





Camera and Tripod

March 2013: I have been taking some pictures with my Canon T2i DSLR camera and an old manual lens FD 35-105mm zoom. It took some searching on-line to find an adapter that would let me join a 25 year old lens to a 2 year old camera... Amazon.ca saved the day!
I was able to get a couple pictures of Comet PanSTARRS in mid March, before it became to dim to capture. (A car zoomed by in the second frame).
The picture of my favourite constellation "Orion" is ten 15 second long frames stacked, ISO 800. Orion stands (from top to bottom stars) about 890 light years tall. The top left bright star "Betelgeuse", if placed where our sun is, would reach past the orbit of Jupiter, thus consuming the orbits of Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars and Jupiter!
God challenged Job by reminding him that He is in control! - God said:
        "Can you direct the movement of the stars, binding the cluster of the Pleiades or loosening the cords of Orion?" Job 38:31 (NLT)
My response would be..."ummm, no... ok God, you're in control! Sorry for doubting you - Big Guy!"
I also included a quick 1/3 second shot of the cloud covered moon.

Finally... Clear Skies! 
Friday night, March 8th was an ideal night to set up and try out my new telescope. I am now shooting with an 8" Skywatcher Newtonian OTA. I sold my 6" SCT in the fall and picked up the 8" Newt about a month before Christmas. There has been very few clear nights but finally, Friday was one!
Spring is galaxy season so I decided to shoot the Pinwheel Galaxy M101 (or NGC 5457). 
The Pinwheel has a diameter of 170,000 light years and it's about 21 million light years away! It's located above the handle in the Big Dipper.
Look up into the heavens. Who created all the stars? He brings them out like an army, one after another, calling each by its name. Because of His great power and incomparable strength, not a single one is missing. (Is 40:26)

Pinwheel Galaxy M101 - 36 x 4min sub frames = 2hrs 24mins total exposure @ 800iso



Venus Transit - June 5, 2012

June 5, 2012 - Venus Transit Day:


Boeing...

In the days approaching Transit Day, I scoped out different location that would have a clear view of the setting sun and access to a power outlet (for powering my mount). A small hill at our church’s side yard was the spot. I set up mid afternoon and was ready to shoot pictures about 45 minutes before it started. We saw an airplane flying straight for the sun and hoped it would cross… and it did!!! I was lucky enough to capture these three shots!!!



Going...



Gone!!!

 

...Here is my best shots of the real Transit, of Venus:

Just before sunset with Venus and another airplane!!!

 

 

 

 

June 20, 2012 - The day of the Trifid
I set up at home as far down my driveway as possible to improve my viewing angle of this southern sky nebula. I was shooting just over top the house and backyard trees. 
M20 the Trifid Nebula is an emissions nebula in the constellation Sagittarius:  

M20 The Trifid Nebula (2200 lys) - 40 frames x 4 minutes (re-processed in CS2-free, Apr/13)

Spring 2012 - Galaxies:

Our sun is so big you could fit almost 1 million earths in it. It’s an average sized star and it’s only one of 200 billion stars in the Milk Way Galaxy. So… to start wrapping my brain around the fact that other galaxies exist (maybe 400 billion more) is mind blowing. Actually observing and imaging those galaxies… Unreal!!!

This is the Whirlpool Galaxy M51 located under the handle of the Big Dipper estimated to be 37 million light years away. It is home to roughly 100 billion suns (about half as many as our home galaxy , The Milky Way). You can also see neighboring galaxy NGC5195.

I shot 140 - 5.25minute exposures over two nights early last week… I manually selected only 50 of the clearest shots, stacked them and processed colour levels, brightness, contrast and saturation in Gimp.  (Total exposure time is 4 hours, 23 minutes)

Side note: I lost so many of my original shots because part way through the second night the wires hanging from my small guiding scope came in contact with my telescopes focusing knob – As the mount rotated (or tracked) the focuser was turned ever so slightly by the wires, thus defocusing my scope!!! Another hard lesson learned!

The first time I ever observed M51 visually was three years ago, at our club observatory, with our 16” Newtonian Reflector Telescope.

 

M104

I set up at our club observatory and shot M104, the Sombrero Galaxy.

It is a little edge-on galaxy in Virgo and is recognized right away in the eyepiece. I believe it's core is one of the biggest estimated black holes!

I started firing shots by 10pm and was all packed up by 2:30am so I could be chipper at work the next day. In that time I shot 33 – 4minute frames and stacked them for a total exposure of 2 hours, 12 minutes.

The most exciting part of the night was the discovery of a mom raccoon and her four little nursing pups (only days old and furless) who have taken up residence in our main observatory building. We only entered the building to sign in-and-out so we could leave her alone. Her pups squeaked and chirped  the hole time we were there, probably fighting over the best milk supply! There was some satisfaction in knowing this little family was safe from the howling coyotes we were also hearing:

 

November 1, 2011:
After shooting the moon as seen in the last post I slewed to my favourite open cluster, M37. This open star cluster is beautiful to observe in a telescope and when long exposures are shot the colour differences of the star within the cluster are revealed:

M37 Open Cluster (4600 lys) - 22 frames x 3 minutes

December 2, 2011:Lot of work for little results! (but I'm slowly learning). This is ICI434 "The Horsehead Nebula". It is a very adim object right under Orion's eastern belt star (you can see the glare from the star creating the large flare on the left side of this picture). This object is more suited to larger aperture scopes than my 6" SCT.


ICI434 Horsehead Nebula (1500 lys) -  16 frames x 6.25minutes

February 20, 2012:
Orion’s Nebula is a very popular nebula in the constellation of Orion the Hunter.
On February 20^th I noticed it was going to be clear until midnight (very rare these days)… My intention was to image M81, a beautiful spiral galaxy near the big dipper. I was having trouble with computer guiding that close to the northern celestial pole so I decided to shoot M42 to the south.
This image is a combination of 27 – 45 second exposures and 12 – 225 second exposures yielding 1hr 5min total exposure. The short exposures captured the central detail in the nebula while the longer exposures provided the dim perimeter detail. They were manually combined using layer masking in GIMP (my first experience with layer masking). While processing this shot I was also very careful to ‘push’ the colour levels evenly to preserve the natural colour of the nebula, the way my camera ‘saw’ it!
I look forward to shooting more deep-sky images with a variety of exposure lengths so I can further develop my “layer masking” techniques!:

M42 Orion's Nebula (1600 lys) - 27 frames x 45sec & 12 frames x 3.75 minutes

November 1st, 2011:
Continuing to learn to shoot the right exposures and computer processing images.
I decided to image the waxing (almost quarter) moon. This image is a combination of 10 individual frames, 1/640 @ 800 ISO (stacked in Registax).
The central crater with the mountain peak in it's middle is called "Theophilus" (it's centered in the close-up picture). Theophilus is 100 kms in diameter and 3.2 kms deep!

Cropped for a closer look.