M51 on Jan 29, 2006
Last evening I met up with fellow amateur astronomers at the Crow Valley Campground near Briggsdale, CO. It was quite cloudy when I arrived about half an hour after sunset. We spent a couple hours talking about good times last summer and making plans for possible star party trips to the Texas Star Party, northwestern Nebraska, Mt. Evans, CU Mountain Observatory, and our favorite, Fox Park, Wyo. The sky cleared shortly after 8pm. It was fairly cold, around 8 degrees F, but fortunately very little wind.
I set up the 300D to take some time exposures, but was quite dismayed when I remembered that the batteries were still in the charger back at home! Fortuanately, I had brought along the Stellacam2 so I set it up on the Celestron Nexstar11 with a 0.33 focal reducer. I was quite pleased to discover that I could set the gain very high (12/14) and still not have much background noise. Normally I can only set to about 8 or 9/14.
Around 00:30 I took this image of M51 and its companion to the north NGC 5195.
At the same time I was imaging this, my friend Gary was looking at it in his 30 inch dob nearby. It was really cool to compare the views. M51 is an awesome object in his 30 inch. The spiral arms are absolutely amazing to trace and dark lane extending below NGC 5195 is very apparent. The image on the notebook from the Stellacam2 is pretty stunning as well. The image is much noisier, but the same structures can be seen. Still though, it just can’t compare to the view through a large scope at dark site.
January 30th, 2006 at 3:56 am
I also got a shot of this cool galaxy.Considering it was shot through a grove of trees and their was a street light 50ft away.It came out pretty good!.
I have shots from last year,that came out ok.I had to crop the images to show a larger version,which made the image grainy looking.The shot I took the other night is HUGE and has much detail but,because I was shooting through the trees and had a street light nearby.I had to reduce the exposure by a large margin.I can’t wait to take anothe crack at this object.
Really nice shot by the way!!!
January 30th, 2006 at 9:29 pm
Andrew,
Thanks. This is an object I’ll be spending more imaging time on as well. It would be nice to get a color image of it with the Canon 300D so I could make a poster print. Do you have your images posted somewhere?
January 31st, 2006 at 5:24 pm
I just have one image posted on my blog.It is like I said,it isn’t a very good shot since it was very hazy,hot and humid when I took the shot.The other problem I had when I got the shot was,the fact that I was pointed right over the center of town,which unfortunately,is very well lit.