Archive for March, 2006

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The sunflower (M63) and blackeye galaxy (M64)

Wednesday, March 29th, 2006

The sky cleared last night for a while and I was able to image a couple galaxies. Conditions were not great, occasional high thin clouds, only fair turbulence (5/10), and fair transparency as well. Temperature was a comfortable 48 °F and there was no wind.

First was the sun flower galaxy, Messier 63 (NGC 5055) in the constellation Canis Venatici. Its spiral arms are all short arcs rather than long, well defined spiral arms. M63 has a bright nucleus inside a mottled oval core.

Messier 63, the sun flower galaxy

The black eye galaxy, Messier 64 (NGC 4826), in constellation Coma Berenices is an amazing object. It has a large bright central core with a conspicuous dark patch adjacent a bright ring in the north east. William Hershel noted the “black eye” appearance way back in 1785.

Messier 64, the black eye galaxy

Equipment used was a Celestron Nexstar11 mounted on an APT wedge, Meade F3.3 focal reducer, and Astrovid Stellacam2 video camera. Images were dark subtracted, flat field corrected, and stacked with Registax3. Approximately 30 minutes of 8.5 second exposures.

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Messier 82 and NGC 4565

Friday, March 24th, 2006
Below image of Messier 82, the “Cigar Galaxy” in Ursa Major was taken with a Celestron Nexstar11, a Meade F3.3 focal reducer, and an Astrovid Stellacam2 video camera. M82 is a disk irregular galaxy located 12 million light years ago. It is believed that M82 has been distorted by a recent interaction with nearby M81. The sky was mostly clear, temperature was 32°F, turbulence was 7/10, and transparency was good.

Messier 82 in Ursa Major

Next I took some images of NGC 4565 in Coma Berenices. NGC 4565 is a beautiful, large, and bright edge on galaxy approximately 35 million light years from earth. Same conditions and equipment above. Both images from a 20 minutes of video taken with 8.5 second integration, gain 7.5/14, dark substracted and aligned with Registax3.

 

 

 

 

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Saturn on March 23, 2006

Friday, March 24th, 2006

Tonight was the first time in about 18 days that we’ve had clear skies.  Quite nice out in the back yard with temperatures around freezing, no wind, and good transparency. Air was pretty steady as well, around 7/10. I sent my hand control off to Celestron to get it replaced with a newer version. I’ve been running my scope with an application called NexRemote.  Its not exactly easy to align the scope using the notebook keyboard, but I’m getting better at it.  The good news is that NexRemote is much more accurate pointing than the old hand control.

After collimating the scope, the first target was saturn.  I decided to up the frame rate from 10 fps which I usually use to 20 fps.  The image was a bit better.

Saturn on Mar 24, 2006 at 04:55 UT

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C/2006A1 (Pojmanski) on Mar 5, 2006

Sunday, March 5th, 2006
The comet finally cleared a cloud bank about 5:25 am and I was able to get about 10 minutes of video. Faint wisps of the tail can be seen extending approximately 21 arc-minutes to the west. Coma appears to be ~ 5.7 arc-min across.  Image below created from a stack of 60,  two second exposures, taken in a period of about 4 minutes. Sky was mostly clear (except where the comet was of course),  temperature 33 deg F, occasional wind gusts to 5 mph, turbulence fair (5/10), and transparency was generally very good (occasional thin clouds drifted through). Equipment used was Celestron Nexstar11, F3.3 focal reducer, and Stellacam2 video camera.
Image of comet C/2006A1 (Pojmanski) on March 5, 2006

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Comet C2006A1 (Pojmanski) on March 4, 2006

Saturday, March 4th, 2006

 The comet was quite easy to find even though it was behind my neighbor’s trees and it was partially obscurred by thin clouds — not exactly ideal conditions.  Images for the below animation were taken at 05:15 and 05:41 am MST with Nexstar11, F3.3 focal reducer, and Stellacam2 video. Temperature was 34°F;  sky was partly cloudy with thin clouds; turbulence was fair (5/10). As you can see in the animation, the comet is moving quite rapidly north (north is approximately up, east to the left in the images).

Animation showing comet Pojmanski on March 4, 2006 

There is just a faint hint of a tail towards the west in the image below.

Animation of comet Pojmanski on March 4, 2006

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