From: Mark Gaffney <markgaffney@me.com>

Date: March 7, 2010 2:27:01 PM MST

To: Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com

Subject: Re: [Astro_IIDC] New DSO Images


They`re great Milton! 

I have a Hubble image of the Black Eye Galaxy on a new app on my iPod Touch. It almost seems to be turning slowly!

With my imaging I`ll probably have to use my spotlight on the shipping container method for aligning the finder with the camera`s offset. The moon is rising too late now to do it for M 42. I checked the spotlight solution (shining it on the small sign on the container about 80 metres distant) from the scope the other night in a brief non rainy period & it can be seen alright. Would 80 metres be OK to give such a finder alignment do you think?


Mark.

On 08/03/2010, at 7:55 AM, milton_aupperle wrote:

Hi Folks;

I've had 2 clear dark nights (March 5 and 6) and have been making the most of them (starting at 7:15 dusk pm up until 4 am each night) for DSO's. So far I'm imaged M35, M53, M64 (Black Eye Galaxy), M67, NGC 2392 (Eskimo Nebula), NGC 2903 (barred spiral Galaxy) and NGC 4565 (edge on galaxy). If the weahter hold off (were supposed to get rain / snow for the tuesday to at least thursday) I'll try and capture the Cone nebula NGC 2264 before it drifts too far west.

So far I've only processed preliminary images of NGC 2392:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Astro_IIDC/files/DSO/NGC2392_EskimoNebula_MJA_20100305.jpg

which shows the "head in the hood" with some of the outer ring structure and M64:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Astro_IIDC/files/DSO/M64_MJA_20100306.jpg

the "Black Eye Galaxy". All were taken with my C8 @ 1150 mm FL on an HEQ5 mount, Astrondon LRGB filters, Hutech IDAS LPR filter, Celestron OAG and Grasshopper PGR 16 bit mono Camera. Image scale is 1.26 arc seconds per pixel. Guiding, image acquisition, stacking and processing done in Astro IIDC.

Haze / thin clouds have been minimal so I can go deep (15 minute exposures). However turbulence has been erratic, dead calm (<2 arc second) and then bursts of >10 arc second jumps.

More later as I get around to processing them all..

TTYL..

Milton Aupperle