New Forest Observatory» Hyperstar and SXVF-M25C

Comet Lulin animation

Greg Parker — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 13:12:36 +0000

I took 78 x 4-minute subs of comet Lulin on 28th February 2009 and created a deep-sky image of the object back then. But it has taken me until 10th February 2012 to edit all the individual subs into a short animation Here you see comet Lulin moving through Leo and passing in front of a bunch of Leo galaxies towards the end of the animation. Enjoy

You Tube animation:

The Fireworks galaxy NGC6946 and open cluster NGC6939 in Cepheus

Greg Parker — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 12:59:29 +0000

Here we have the Fireworks galaxy, Arp29, Caldwell 12, NGC6946 – and the open cluster NGC6939 lying close by (in the image, not by distance) in the constellation Cepheus. This is recently processed data from 20th August 2009 taken with the Hyperstar III and is 23 subs at 5-minutes per sub – could obviously do with quite a lot more exposure time for the galaxy, and some dithered imaging would have helped a lot with the quality as well. Maybe next time

The Running Man nebula – the full Monty

Greg Parker — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 19:29:36 +0000

Managed to process the full width of this image which I didn’t think I’d manage to do when I started on this one earlier today.

Running Man – bigger crop

Greg Parker — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 17:34:53 +0000

Managed to squeeze out a bigger crop which brought in the top of M42 at the bottom of the image.

The Running Man nebula in Orion – the complete dataset

Greg Parker — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 15:06:33 +0000

I used Registar to add together all the data I had on the Running Man nebula in Orion. This amounted to well over 80 hours of total exposure time including some recent 5 x 1,000 second subs from the Hyperstar III. The reason for the 8-spiked stars is that the spikes were orientated differently in different datasets (I’ve no idea why).

Wide field image of M51, the Whirlpool galaxy in Canes Venatici

Greg Parker — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 10:33:48 +0000

I used Registar to create this composite of Hyperstar I and Hyperstar III data taken of the Whirlpool galaxy, M51. Around 3 and a half hours of f#2 data taken with an 11″ SCT. Clearly worth getting even more data in this region.

Abell 2151 the Hercules galaxy cluster

Greg Parker — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 16:03:36 +0000

Hyperstar III data taken on 30th May 2009 – 20 subs at 5-minutes per sub, f#2, 11″ SCT.

Leo Trio – a bit brighter

Greg Parker — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 09:07:39 +0000

The version below – but a little brighter

Looking at this image with fresh eyes this morning rather than towards midnight last night – it looked to dark overall, so brightened it up a bit.

Leo Trio composite using Registar

Greg Parker — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 22:29:01 +0000

This is a composite image showing the Leo Trio region. Hyperstar III data taken on 21st March 2010 has been combined with older Hyperstar 1/H9C (2-frames) data from much earlier. The composite was created using the powerful registering program Registar.

The Gamma Cassiopeia region

Greg Parker — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 18:03:22 +0000

A 4-frame Hyperstar III mosaic of the Gamma Cassiopeia region taken a long while ago.