Saiph taken with the Hyperstar III on Friday 13th January 2012.  59 subs at 30 seconds per sub.  Can even see little PGC147980 at 7 O’clock on one of the bright stars near the bottom – mag 30!

Taken on the evening of Friday 13th January 2012 (living up to its reputation just about EVERYTHING went wrong this night) we have the NGC2174 region in Gemini known as the Monkey Head nebula.  I have North down in this image so that the Monkey’s Head is clearer to see.  What is amazing about this image is that it is just one hour’s worth of exposure time (6 x 10-minute subs) using the ultra-fast Hyperstar III system at f#2.  There was also an intrusive Moon playing havoc.  This turned out so well under adverse conditions that I feel I must do it justice by imaging it again on a Moonless night with maybe 5-minute subs just to get the total number of subs up.

Dimming every other star in the area is the brightest star in the sky at magnitude -1.46, the brilliant blue Sirius in the constellation Canis Major

Taken as an experiment immediately after 12 Victoria – 60 x 10-second subs.

Towards top left of this image you can see the elongated trail of asteroid 12 Victoria.  Around 50 subs at 3-minutes per sub with the Hyperstar III – bright Moon and a lot of thin high cloud but the asteroid still shone through.  The bright star should be red.  One thing to note, the images were dithered so that I could remove all the hot pixels with SDMask stacking – except if you use SDMask staking then it treats the asteroid trail as outliers and you lose your asteroid   So it is necessary to average stack which means you then need to manually remove all the hot pixels which is a right pain.

The December 21st 2011 pinhole camera image is today’s Earth Science Picture of the Day.  Thank you Jim for continuing to publish my work

Here is a 3-frame Hyperstar III mosaic of the M87 region taken in April 2010.

Another fine Horsehead image from another PAIG lady – this time it’s the return of Anna Morris (who shared her amazing NGC7000 region mega-mosaic with us a few weeks ago).  Very nicely processed image Anna – and what can I say to the PAIG guys other than – THE GIRLS ARE CREAMING YOU LADS

Anna provided the following details for her image:

Horsehead Nebula imaged 18 Dec 2011 into morning of 19 Dec 2011, scope: Orion EON80ED, camera: Atik 314L+

Ha: 4x1800s, 6x600s, SII, OIII: 3x1800s (bin1) each, SII, OIII: 6x600s (bin2) each, RGB: 4x600s (bin2) each.

Total: 500 min (8hrs, 20 min)

What can I say other than the image reflects the amount of data taken and confirms my own findings that for First Class images you need in excess of 8-hours total imaging time if at all possible.  There is no substitute for time spent on an object.

  A Hyperstar III 2-framer of the Markarian Chain/M87 region in the Virgo galaxy cluster.

This is a single frame Hyperstar III image of the M100 region taken in April 2010.  Again presented in colour and in B&W so you can see the numerous “faint fuzzies” in the background.

The second of 7 frames of data processed in colour and B&W.  This one is centred on M87.