Vern’s Weblog

Messier 27 (NGC 6853) in the constellation Vulpecula is a show piece object that always is worth the visit on summer and fall evenings. It is relative bright so it makes a great target for astrophotographers as well. Below is my best effort to date, though I think I missed focus just a tad. I had lots of problems taking these. I took 30 images and only came up with about 16 that were usable. Set screws in the T-ring were probably loose as tracking and north alignment were quite good.

Image taken with Celestron Nexstar11 telescope, Meade F6.3 focal reducer, and Canon 300D Rebel at cassegrain focus. Camera was set at ASA 400 with 3 minute exposures. Manually tracked with A1010 telescope, Televue 2.5X Powermate, and Stellcam2 video camera. Temperature was 64 to 58°F, 40% humidity, mostly clear sky, absolutely no wind, and turbulence varied between 6 and 5/10.

I created some wallpaper size images as well 1600×1200, 1280×1024, and 1024×768.

Below is an image of comet 177P/Barnard which is currently located in constellation Hercules, midway between  stars Sarin (delta) and Kornephoris (beta).  See “SkyHound” map. This comet has orbital period of 120 years and was last seen in 1889. Its position was recently recovered at the end of June.

An animated version showing comet movement is also available.

Images acquired with Celestron Nexstar11 telescope, Meade F3.3 focal reducer, and Astrovid Stellacam2 video camera. Stellacam2 gain 9/14, medium gamma, integrate 256 frames, 15 minutes of video processed with ImagePlus, Registax3, and Photoshop Elements2. Sky was clear, temperature was 68°F, humidity 40%, absolutely no wind, transparency very good, and turbulence about 6/10.

 I decided to revist M16, the Eagle Nebula, in constellation Serpens last evening.  We haven’t had any clear sky here in the Denver area for some time now, so it was nice to do some imaging for a change.  Image was taken with Canon 300D Rebel with 2 minute exposure at ASA 400.  That was not near enough time for this object, the bird just barely shows up in the raw images.  I’ll need to use 3 or maybe even 4 minute exposure next time. My previous effort with the Stellacam2 was better. The image was created from a stack of 10 images, I’ll need to increase that to maybe 20 next time to reduce the noise.

Image taken with Celestron Nexstar11, F6.3 focal reducer, and Canon 300D camera.  Manually guided with Stellarvue A1010, TV 2.5X Powermate, and Stellacam2 video camera. Sky was clear, turbulence around 6/10, wind between 3 to 5 mph, temperature 64°F, humidity 80-86%, transparency was generally good.

I imaged Comet 41P Tuttle-Giacobini-Kresak in the constellation Virgo using my current “image the field and hope” technique. Just a hint of it on the notebook monitor, but I couldn’t be certain as it was close to noise level. I verified that I was in the correct field with a star chart program on the notebook and a Sloan DSS image of the area I grabbed earlier. According to the ephemeris the comet was about visual magnitude 12.2. It was fairly low, about 18° above the horizon when the images were acquired.

Image taken last evening between 10:50pm MDT and 10:58 MDT from Boulder Ranch open space trail head (north of Boulder, CO). Sky was clear, transparency was good, temperature was 73°F, 40% humidity, turbulence between 5 and 6/10, no wind. Image taken with Celestron Nexstar11, Meade F3.3 focal reducer, Stellacam2 video camera set at gain 9/14, integrate at 256, and gamma at medium. Images were dark subtracted, flat field and bias corrected with ImagePlus. Images aligned with Registax3 and then brightness enhanced with ImagePlus. Photoshop Elements2 used to create animated gif.

The US National Weather Service’s Space Environment Center has just released test images from the solar xray imager aboard the latest GOES-13 satellite.

See http://www.sec.noaa.gov/sxi/goes13/latest.html