Europa transit of Jupiter 29th November 2012

These images of Jupiter were taken using the 14" Meade SCT at the WYAS observatory. Seven 1500 frame .avi files were taken at 10fps and processed in Registrax 6 to create a .tif image from each .avi file. The .tif images were then finally processed in Photoshop.

The Eurpoa transit started at 19:29 and finished at 20:53 on the 29th November. These images were taken between 20:22 and 20:53.

Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and is the largest planet in the Solar System. It has four Galilean moons or satellites. Transits of Jupiter happen at regular intervals and details can be found by using the  Stellarium planetarium program for your computer,
( It can be downloaded from this url   http://www.stellarium.org/ )

NGC7662 (a.k.a. Caldwell 22 and The Little Blue Snowball. 3,200 light years distant in Andromeda and 32"x 28" arc seconds in size. Images taken during a full and very bright Moon on 28.11.2012 in narrowband filters plus luminance. Equipment: Televue 102, TV 2 x Powermate, Baader 1.25-inch filters in Atik filter wheel. Opticstar 145m-ice camera (1.4 million pixels) guided by Lodestar guide camera on CGEM mount. Images processed in MaximDL and despeckled in Photoshop CS3. L: 9 mins; H-alpha (Red) 20 mins; OIII (Green) 20 mins, H-beta (blue) 15 mins.

M45 - The Pleiades

M45 - The Pleiades or Seven Sisters, is an open cluster containing middle-aged hot stars, located in the constellation of Taurus, and one of the nearest star cluster to Earth. The cluster is dominated by hot, blue and extremely luminous stars that have formed within the last 100 million years.

10/11/12

12x5min Subs, Darks, Flats and Bias

Bonfire Night Double Cluster

The Double Cluster is the common name for open clusters NGC 884 and NGC 869 in Perseus. The clusters are at distances of 7600 and 6800 light-years away, respectively, so they are also fairly close to each other in space. These are relatively young clusters, with NGC 869 being around 5.6 million years old and NGC 884 around 3.2 million years old. Unlike most other object in the Universe, these clusters are blueshifted and are approaching Earth at a speed of around 22 km/s.

5/11/12
16x5min Subs, Darks, Flats and Bias.

The Triangulum Galaxy

The Triangulum Galaxy is a spiral galaxy approximately 3 million light years from Earth in the constellation Triangulum.  It is also known as Messier 33 or NGC 598. The Triangulum Galaxy is the third-largest member of the Local Group of galaxies, which includes the Milky Way Galaxy, the Andromeda Galaxy and about 30 other smaller galaxies. It is one of the most distant permanent objects that can be viewed without the aid of a telescope good viewing conditions with no light pollution.

This image is a combination of images taken on the 10th and 17th November using an 8" Celestron SCT with f6.3 focal reducer, guided with a QHY5 guide camera and a Canon 40D DSLR as the image camera. There are 6 images of 165sec @ ISO 1600 and 19 images 245 sec @ ISO 1250, stacked in Depp Sky Stacker and finished in Photoshop. 

This image of M1 is a blend of Luminance, red and H-alpha images taken in separate image sessions (hence the diagonally offset image. It was an experiment to see if images from different runs could be combined to create a more detailed image. It was made into a black and white image in Photoshop CS3.

The narrowband image of M1, the Crab Nebula, that I took was blended with a luminance filter image taken in the same image run. This gives a more subtle picture and removed all background sky noise needing no further adjustment.

M1 in narrowband filters

This image of M1, the Crab Nebula in Taurus, was taken in 85 minutes of narrowband filters H-alpha 7nm, OIII, SII and H-beta. The pink is hydrogen and some sulphur, the blue is hydrogen, the green is oxygen. Usual set-up Baader 1.25-inch filters on cooled Opticstar 145m-ice camera, Televue 102 refractor on CGEM mount, Lodestar guider and control via MaximDL as well as photo processing. Photoshop CS3 was used for final touch-up.

M1 Crab Nebula
3x5 mins L, 1x5 mins R, 3x5 mins G, 1x5 mins B, 2x5 mins H-alpha - Baader 1.25-inch filters. Using Opticstar 145m-ice, CGEM mount and Lodestar guider. Main scope Televue 102 refractor. Processed in MaximDL and despeckled in Photoshop CS3.

This is the centre of M31, the Andromeda Galaxy. It's about 2.5 million light years away and this image just shows the central region (it's actually 6 times the diameter of the full Moon to see it all). I took 6 x 5 minute exposures in Luminance and a 1 x 1 minute Luminace image, which were all stacked and processed in MaximDL followed by a little tweeking in Photoshop CS3. Image taken on 5th November 2012 in between the fireworks and clouds. The camera was an Opticstar 145M-ice using a Baader 1.25-inch filter. The telescope was a Televue 102 and was guided by a Starlight Express Lodestar camera in a separate (really cheap) refractor in tandem. Celestron CGEM mount on a pier.