New Forest Observatory ®

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.

Frame 1 of 7 taken with the Hyperstar III processed and ready to be made into a mega-mosaic  of the Virgo/Coma galaxy region.  Over 16 hours of Hyperstar III data taken between 7th April 2010 and 17th April 2010 found in the archive and now being processed.  Fairly straightforward processing each individual frame – but stitching all the frames seamlessly together is going to be a major challenge 🙂  Get your star map out to see how much ground I’ll cover with this one.  It goes from M100 furthest  North to M98 furthest West down to M60 furthest South/East.  WOWSER – this is going to be a biggy!!!!

Negative B&W images of deep-sky scenes are great for picking up all those background “faint fuzzies”.

As mentioned below, last night I focus trained and collimated the rebuilt Hyperstar III system on the C11.  This image is the result of 10 x 5-minute subs taken with a bright Moon playing havoc as well as thin high wall-to-wall cloud.  To say I am extremely pleased with this image is a massive understatement.  Pin sharp (and round!) stars right across the M25C chip – it’s looking better than ever 🙂  These subs were also dithered, so no hot pixels to be seen!  Also – took my very first set of flats for the Hyperstar III this morning (and bias frames) so all the subs were flat and bias calibrated which made the processing of this data a doddle.  I am going to have great fun getting back into Hyperstar imaging and my latest thoughts are to add the fine faint detail to the wide field mini-WASP data using the Hyperstar data.  I think this combination is due to create some pretty amazing deep-sky images 🙂 🙂