New Forest Observatory ®

Our long dark evenings now mean we can start early and easily get a good 6-hours on an object – weather of course permitting.  This Month’s object will do well with 6 or more hours total imaging time on it – it is the Gamma Cassiopeia region of Cassiopeia.  I am particularly fond of the Cassiopeia region anyway for its incredible star fields – not only is it in a rich Milky Way region of space, but it is also jam-packed full of open clusters and it is very hard to take an image anywhere within Cassiopeia and not find that you’ve bagged an open cluster (or two).

Gamma Cass is special however, in that it has two faint, but very beautiful nebulae associated with it – namely IC59 and IC63.  These emission/reflection nebulae almost half-encircle Gamma Cass and the subtle red/blue hues creates a beautiful image with the surrounding Milky Way star field.  Being very faint this region needs both long sub-exposure times and a long total exposure time as well.  Even with the Hyperstar III at f#2 I used 10-minute sub-exposures, and for a low-noise final image it would be good to get around 60 subs (at least) meaning a time investment around 10-hours or so.  Not only do I have a single frame (deep) image of Gamma Cass with IC59 & IC63 – but there is also a 4-frame mosaic of the region awaiting Noel’s time – now that one will be a stunner!!  Needless to say with such a faint object you need optimum conditions – and that of course means no Moon.

Put in the time and effort on this one and you will be amply rewarded.

We are fast approaching my favourite imaging Month of the year 🙂  See you all again in December!

We are now enjoying long dark evenings and are once again getting into the swing of imaging well into the early hours – weather permitting.  The imaging object I have chosen for this month is the famous Double Cluster in the constellation Perseus.  The Double Cluster as the name suggests is made up from two beautiful open clusters, NGC 869 and NGC 884.  Walter Scott Houston in his Deep-Sky Wonders book has this down as a January object, but I find I have to have a go at looking/imaging this one the second it comes into a favourable position in my skies.  The usual description of this amazing object, when viewed through a low-power eyepiece is “Diamonds on Black-Velvet” – and I clearly recall my first observation of the Double Cluster throught the C11 was precisely just like that.  It is an incredible sight, and it is even a naked eye object appearing as a fuzzy glowing region near Cassiopeia.  In fact it is such an amazing visual object that CCD images rarely do it justice for reasons that will become apparent as we carry on examining this region.

If you use a low powered telescope, or better still a pair of 10 x 50 binoculars to look in the Double Cluster region, something very odd immediately strikes you.  Like ornaments on a charm bracelet the Double Cluster sits on the edge of a bright ring of stars which leap out at you when viewed through binoculars.  Now look at this region on a star map or planetarium program.  Although you can make out the ring of stars that make up “Greg’s Charm Bracelet” – they are by no means conspicuous, and don’t show themselves to be clearly differentiated in any way from the myriad of background stars in the region.  So this is clearly some sort of subtle eye-brain processing going on which makes the “Bracelet” so very clear when visually observed.  There are plenty more asterisms that “pop out” when observed through binoculars, but effectively “hide away” when looked at on planetarium programs and star maps – Kemble’s Cascade immediately comes to mind.  I think it is similar subtle processing by the brain-eye system that makes the Double Cluster itself so very striking.

Returning to imaging the Double Cluster, it is a matter of getting a large number of subs at maybe 2 or 3 minutes per sub, under Moonless conditions.  We can of course image clusters with the Moon up, but if we are trying to get that “Diamonds on Black Velvet” image, then we want the darkest skies possible.  It is also worth going as deep as possible as well in order to pull out the impressive dark rift that runs between the two clusters adding further to the  contrast when viewing this region.  For a nice noise-free image it is worth trying for at least 100 sub-exposures which means spending up to maybe 5-hours imaging the Double Cluster.  If you end up with an image that even approximates the view of the real thing – then it’s 5-hours really well spent.

Clear, dark skies until November’s object of the Month 🙂