Noel has just finished processing this little beauty so up it goes straight onto the NFO site! Globular cluster M71 with an accompanying little open cluster [OCL116, Harvard20] and Gamma Sagitta in the top left hand corner. Throughout the whole field of view is a Milky Way backdrop. Enjoy the trip!
Well I did manage to get out on the evening of the 20th, even though it was work the next day, and I spent a couple of hours imaging the beautiful open cluster M39 in Cygnus. Continue reading
Dean of Starizona is very much on the ball. He just informed me that the problem I had last night was probably due to me putting the cog on the FeatherTouch the wrong way round. I just went out to the observatory in the twilight and found that (as per usual) Dean was quite right! I have now reversed the cog and it’s all systems go – thank you Dean!!!
Looks like it may actually start off clear tonight, would do wouldn’t it with work tomorrow – but I must give this brilliant new system a trial if at all possible. I’ll aim for a cluster in the Milky Way so I can keep to short subs and a short overall exposure time. I’m now going to try and grab an hours kip.
I had a two-hour, cloud-free slot last night between 11.00 p.m. and 1.00 a.m. Bound to be clear with a blazing (full?) Moon trundling along the southern horizon. O.K. so not a good night for imaging, but it did give me my first chance at firing up the Starizona autofocusing setup for the FeatherTouch focuser. Learn from my experience. Continue reading
Taken earlier this year, Noel has just finished processing one of the few single star images taken using the Sky 90/SXVF-M25C combination. This time it is the bright star Regulus. If you invert the image colours (to pick up the faint stuff) you’ll just make out the dwarf Leo I galaxy lying directly to the left (and very close to) Regulus itself.
Great news again! The Parker/Carboni double-team got their rendition of the Jellyfish Nebula region in this month’s Astronomy Now as Picture of the Month!! Thank you once again to Nik Szymanek for a very nice accompanying description.
A higher resolution version of the first light NGC7000 image taken on the version III Hyperstar can now be viewed on Starizona’s Hyperstar Imaging Site.
The evening of thursday 3rd July was clear and Moonless – and was also first light for the new Hyperstar lens for the C11 telescope 🙂 Continue reading
It’s still not good with regards to dark skies or sociable hours to image during July. I see from my notes that it is not worth starting imaging much before 11.00 p.m. but after no imaging for the whole of June – cabin fever starts to set in. Continue reading
Noel added the 3rd frame to the mega Markarian Chain mosaic and I converted it to a negative black and white image so you can clearly see all the faint fuzzies.
I didn’t place M87 in the correct place in the third frame so it just got chopped off at the bottom of the image – very annoying! This was the biggest mosaic taken with the Sky 90/M25C combination.
