Managed to get 15 x 4-minute subs using the Hyperstar III on the new supernova in M82 last night. Although the sky looked crystal clear, and was Moonless as a bonus, the seeing was terrible. Never mind – I do have at least a decent record of the event 🙂
So what’s the excuse for such a grubby image then? Half the sky (towards the East) was clear at 6:00 p.m. but half the sky running north to south and covering the whole of the West was black and overcast. M82 was in the clear bit 🙂 🙂 🙂 Fired up the Hyperstar, did the 2 star align, autofocused on the second star and slewed to M82 – all going well so far. Took a single 30-second sub to check the framing (that’s the image above) – great – M82 is dead centre. Now just need to get a guide star, get autoguiding, and get a load of subs. Autoguide setup playing up – yep, completely clouded out in those 10-15 minutes 🙁 🙁 🙁 So all I got was this 30-second setting up sub. But at least you can see the damn thing.
Where are the peer-reviewed Journal papers in a quality publication to back up your claims??
But will we get 10-minutes of clear sky to be able to image it?
On the 17th – 18th February 2014 there will be a joint Royal Photographic Society/Royal Astronomical Society meeting on Astroimaging.
Looks like this will be an interesting event.
Got today’s Earth Science Picture of the Day (EPOD) http://epod.usra.edu/ with the recent “12 brightest stars” montage I put together.
Thank you Jim at EPOD for continuing to publish my work 🙂
I believe that recently Alan Turing has been pardoned. Pardoned for what exactly?
Shouldn’t the Government of the day actually be asking for forgiveness of the Government of Turing’s day for the vicious chemical assault of Turing?
Let this be a warning to any scientist to NOT get involved in ANYTHING to do with the U.K. government whatever sexual preference you may have.
As it has been non-stop rain for days on end now, I have resorted to taking a look at old data.
Just put together all the datasets I could find of the Cygnus Wall region taken with the Hyperstar III and the M25C one shot colour camera.
You can see the result here:
Went into the garage and loaded up the pinhole camera tonight 🙂 All set and ready to go. Will put it out tomorrow (one day early) and take it down on 22nd June (one day late) if I can keep my paws off it for that long. Fingers crossed for a 6-month sub-exposure.
I am putting together a new pinhole camera for this coming December 21st 2013 (Winter Solstice). It will remain outside recording whatever Sun there might be until June 21st 2014 (Summer Solstice). Big difference from the earlier pinhole photographs I have taken though – this time I went and bought some 8 x 10 inch photopaper 🙂 Too big for the standard beer can – but a perfect fit in a 4-inch diameter piece of plastic drainpipe. A couple of layers of Aluminium foil around the pipe to ensure it is light-tight, and a couple of (black) watertight drainpipe end-caps to seal the ends against light and water. The pinhole itself is made into a piece of Aluminium foil which is stuck over a 1″ diameter hole drilled into the side of the pipe. So this goes out on Friday evening and I have a 6-month wait to see whether the idea has worked or not. Check back on June 22nd for the answer 🙂
