The Webb Deep Sky Society

I'm a member of this society and I will be attending its annual meeting on Saturday, 5th December, 2009, at the Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge.

The list of guest speakers and their chosen subjects look very interesting and "celebrates the 150th anniversary of the publication of Celestial Objects for Common Telescopes by T.W.Webb"

It'll also be interesting to see where Hoyle worked and formulated some of his ideas. Yes, I'm a fan.

I should point out that you don't have to be a member to attend, so, if you fancy an interesting day.

M31 The Great Andromeda galaxy

This is my latest image of this galaxy from the other night, the 15th. Large and bright with multiple dust lanes showing. This is always going to be one of those objects I'm going to return to, time and time again.


Constellation: Andromeda. Distance 2.5 million light years.
Imaging scope - Takahashi FSQ-106ED f5 refractor at prime focus

Camera - Modified Canon 40D 

Filter - Astronomik CLS

Autoguiding - TMB 80 mm f6 refractor, Starlight Express Lodestar camera, EQ6 Pro mount and PHD guiding software, dithered.

Exposure - 27 x 300 and 10 x 120 seconds of subexposures

Darks, Flats and Dark Flats used

Software - Nebulosity for focus, acquisition, aligning and stacking. Photoshop CS3 with Noel's Actions and Russell Croman's Gradient Xterminator.

Temperature 9° Celsius

Published in Astronomy Now's, 2010 yearbook

I went into Donny this morning and slipped into W.H. Smith's reading room, there I flicked through a copy of Astronomy Now's 2010 yearbook, and on page 34, in the "Pictures of the year gallery", I saw my image of the Rosette nebula, which was "Picture of the month" in the April issue of the magazine.
Also on page 78 of the yearbook, my Pleiades image helps illustrate "Winter", that was originally published in the magazine's "Picture gallery" in March. That was a pleasant surprise as I didn't have any forewarning.

Nothing much has happened at the Kingfisher observatory recently, the sky conditions have been terrible, I'm itching to carry on imaging. I should have some exciting news in 2 or 3 weeks time, which'll mean I will have to make a slight adjustment to the subtitle of this blog.

Edit: The Rosette nebula image has also been published again in Astronomy Now, December 2009 issue, used to help illustrate an article entitled "Celestial Wonders"

M33 The Triangulum galaxy reprocessed

This is another attempt to process this galaxy image which I first posted below, I went back to basics starting with the darks and flats etc. There's still a hint of the red stuff of the emission nebulae, perhaps the previous one was a bit too red?

Imaging details as previous.

M33 The Triangulum galaxy

This is my latest version of this particular galaxy my first pre-modified camera version being here. This was captured during the early hours of Monday, the sky was deceptively clear but a high very thin haze was most certainly there and produced poor subs. I've spent some appreciable processing time on this, stretched it, fudged it and deleted it, and started all over again on numerous occasions. I'll most probably give it another go in the near future, in the meantime this object is now at a good imaging angle, so I may even take more subs.

You may also notice that this image shows the red coloured Ha stuff that swirls throughout the galaxy, these are star forming regions, one is so large that it has its own NGC number, NGC 604. That's it at the 7 o'clock position.

Constellation: Triangulum. Distance 3 million light years.

Imaging scope - Takahashi FSQ-106ED f5 refractor 

Camera - Canon 40D 

Filter - Astronomik CLS

Acquisition - Canon EOS Utility

Autoguiding - TMB 80 mm f6 refractor, Starlight Express Lodestar guide camera, EQ6 Pro mount and PHD guiding software.

Exposure - 38 x 360 seconds subexposures

Darks used.

Software - Nebulosity for focus, aligning and stacking. Photoshop CS3 with Noel's Actions and Russell Croman's Gradient Xterminator.

Temperature 10° to 9.5°  Celsius

IC 1848 The Baby nebula

The Baby nebula in Cassiopeia is also known as the Soul nebula, the catalogue designation IC 1848 actually refers to the open star cluster in the Baby's belly. It's a tight fit for the baby, I should've gone wider to give it room to breath and kick. The apparent size of the Baby is 60' with a magnitude of 6.5, it's close to another nebula that goes under the name of the Heart, hence the Baby is sometimes called the Soul, i.e. Heart and Soul.

Constellation: Cassiopeia. Distance 7000 light years.

Imaging scope - Takahashi FSQ-106ED f5 refractor at prime focus

Camera - Canon 40D 

Filter - Astronomik CLS

Autoguiding - TMB 80 mm f6 refractor, Starlight Express Lodestar camera, EQ6 Pro mount and PHD guiding software.

Exposure - 32 x 300 seconds

Dark frames, Flats and Dark Flats used

Software - Nebulosity for focus, acquisition, aligning and stacking. Photoshop CS3 with Noel's Actions and Russell Croman's Gradient Xterminator.

Temperature 12° to 9° Celsius

The Face part 2

Further subexposures have been added to the image in the posting below, giving me this one. Smoother and less noise, whether I've made a good job of processing it is another matter.

Constellation: Cygnus. Distance 1,400 light years.
Imaging scope - Takahashi FSQ-106ED f5 refractor at prime focus

Camera - Canon 40D 

Filter - Astronomik CLS

Autoguiding - TMB 80 mm f6 refractor, Starlight Express Lodestar camera, EQ6 Pro mount and PHD guiding software.

Exposure - 36 x 300 seconds

Dark frames, Flats and Dark Flats used

Software - Nebulosity for focus, acquisition, aligning and stacking. Photoshop CS3 with Noel's Actions and Russell Croman's Gradient Xterminator.

Temperature 12° to 9° Celsius