Picture of the Week

I added Sky90 data of M44 to the 2-frame 200mm data of the “Stargate” containing M44 to create this composite image. The nearby Carbon stars X Cancri and T Cancri have been annotated. Cameras used M26C OSC CCDs.

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Picture of the Week

This week we feature Polaris, the North star, together with the surrounding Integrated Flux Nebula (IFN).

This is really seat of the pants imaging to get this one. Why? Because as we are imaging so close to the Pole we cannot autoguide! We are relying totally on how good our Polar alignment is for how long we can take a sub-exposure. We also cannot dither subs – so this is really basic imaging.

For this particular image I used the Sky90 array and 36 x 5-minute sub-exposures.

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Got Today’s EPOD (number 130)

Got today’s EPOD with Carbon star C W Leonis. Thank you Jim for continuing to publish my work 🙂 

 

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Is it Really Worth it?

Clear last night so I started setting up early so I could get some good imaging time in. The last tweak I needed to do was to get the two Canon 200mm lenses aligned to one another (perfectly) and then I was good to go. So after about half an hour I got them aligned, next was just focusing and then IMAGING TIME!

Last time I checked both lenses had the perfect 0, 0, 0 score in CCDInspector (zero pixel shift in X, zero pixel shift in Y, and zero pixel collimation). However, running CCDInspector last night one lens was still perfect (the one I hadn’t re-aligned) and the other lens was miles out! That’s strange, I haven’t seen a collimation shift by moving the whole lens assembly before. Never mind, I’ll just recollimate and get on with the imaging. So I altered the collimation on the offending lens and on re-checking CCDInspector things were not changing as I had expected. So I scrolled across the whole of the image to see if I could work out what was happening, and yes the whole of the right hand side was “off” – but there was also a pair of spikes across a bright star. Oh dear – the dome aperture was cutting across the lens and this is why the collimation looked bad. Also, I have now just wrecked the perfect collimation I had so now I have to waste good imaging time getting the collimation back again. Oh well stop whingeing and just get on with it. After about the 3rd collimation adjustment, the star I had been using for focusing now became too dim for FocusMax to do its stuff – yes, it was clouding over. O.K. I know when it’s time to give up, so I shut everything down. By the time I had shut up shop and got out of the observatory, it had cleared up again. Sometimes you just have to take the hint and go indoors and watch the TV in the warm.

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Aldebaran

Only 6 x 10-minute subs from last night, so pretty noisy, but at least it’s the first image since November 14th 2023, so a major landmark. 200mm lenses and the ASI 2600MC Pro CMOS cameras. Need to take some new flats.

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First Clear Night in Weeks.

A couple of nights back we had the first clear night in many weeks. This is such a rare event it deserves an entry all of its own.

So, starting at 7 p.m. I began work on setting up the 200mm lenses for use with the UV/IR cut filters (for stars and galaxies) having removed the Optolong L-Enhance filters (for nebulae). Very first thing I had to do was take one of the Dell Optiplex 7010 computers indoors to sort out. The computer wasn’t booting up and the power-on light was flashing. Luckily I’ve come across this one before and what the symptoms mean is that the RAM needs re-seating. Re-seating carried out successfully indoors, the computer was brought back out to the observatory, fired-up, and all was well! Actually I discovered a second issue with this particular computer. It has always been VERY slow and it always seemed to be doing far too many read-writes to the HDD. On re-seating the RAM I found the root cause of this problem. There was only a SINGLE STICK of 4Gb RAM in the computer! So I just ordered a bunch more RAM to upgrade this RAM-slugged computer.

Next thing was to re-focus the 2 lenses as there were different filters now in place. That took all of 2-minutes. Now, finally, the biggest pain to sort out. I now need to re-flatten both ASI 2600MC Pro cameras as changing filters clearly changes the optical path to the cameras requiring re-collimation. So I get started on that (extremely boring) job when suddenly no stars are appearing on the monitor. Yep – complete cloud cover at 9:30 p.m. time to shut down for the night – and the final (boring) job is set ready for the next clear night. This imaging business really is a thankless task, especially in the U.K.

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The Perseus Double-Cluster and Stock 2

I just did a quick reprocess on this one and it looked nice enough to re-post.

This is the famous Double-Cluster in Perseus, with the less famous Stock 2 (the stick-man lying on his side at top right).

A 2-frame mosaic using the Sky90 refractors and the M26C OSC CCDs. Approximately 4-hours of 10-minute subs per frame.

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Picture of the Week

Picture of the Week is Greg’s 3 asterism in Leo seen almost dead centre in this image. The image comprises 14 x 12-minute subs taken with the 200mm lenses and M26C OSC CCDs.

I first discovered this asterism whilst scanning across “The Sky 6” planetarium program looking for something interesting. It certainly looked VERY interesting on the monitor. As the object was not in my sky at the time I then downloaded the DSS2 data to have a look at it. Looked EXTREMELY interesting! I then had to wait a few months to get my first Sky90 image of the asterism, and then there was a couple of years wait before getting the 200mm lens image you see above.

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Picture of the Week

For this week’s “Picture of the Week” I have chosen my favourite asterism, namely Kemble’s Cascade. Not only is this a superb star cluster in its own right, but it also has 3 very special stars closely associated with it. These are:

  1. UV Camelopardalis, SAO13009, R-type star.
  2. V Camelopardalis, SAO12870, N-type star.
  3. BD Camelopardalis, SAO12874, S-type star.

I like this region so much I have imaged it with the Hyperstars, the Sky90 array and the 200mm lenses. The first image above is a 4-frame mosaic using the Sky90 array. The second image is a single framer using the 200mm lenses, and the third image is a composite with the R, N and S-type stars annotated.

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Picture of the Week

A regular visitor to this website made the valid comment that the Andromeda image has been the latest one to be shown for far too long. Why has it been up there for so long? Very simple really, I haven’t had a clear Moonless night for weeks, and I haven’t managed to visit any of my winter regulars at all this year. That however is absolutely no excuse for not keeping this site right up to date (weekly at least) and presenting material I have taken earlier.

Here’s one I might not even have put up before (I haven’t checked) and if so that’s pretty remiss. This is 22 subs at 2-minutes per sub on the 200mm lenses with the ASI 2600MC Pro CMOS cameras – and the subject is Sirius. I say cameras (plural) but in fact only one of the lenses could actually image Sirius, the other was below the level of the observatory wall.

So that I do not lapse into extreme laziness in my old age I will attempt to produce a new “Picture of the Week” every Sunday to try and keep (the rapidly waning) enthusiasm going.

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