A nice astrophoto-opportunity arose on the 6th May 2008 – in the twilight sky, beautiful Mercury lay very close to a new Moon. In a big departure from my normal astrophotography – I took the accompanying image with the Canon 40D and a 28-200 mm zoom lens. With 10-subs at 4-seconds per sub – I only wish standard deep-sky imaging was as straightforward as this.
There are a superb pair of galaxies that are ideally positioned during May for imaging, and I find myself drawn back to them year after year. The galaxies are M81, also known as Bode’s galaxy and M82, also known as the Cigar galaxy, both residing in Ursa Major. M81 lies at a distance of 4.5 million light years and shines at magnitude 6.9, whereas M82 is about 17 million light years away and is a rather faint magnitude 8.4. M81 is a nice spiral galaxy, whereas M82 (also known as Arp 337 a unique Arp galaxy, and NGC 3034) is a strange cigar-shaped irregular galaxy associated with an arc of three magnitude 20 quasars, and a peculiar jet of filaments (which show up very well under H-alpha) emanating from the nucleus. There’s plenty more yet in this region! Continue reading
Well our definitive version of M31 with all the added H-alpha made Picture of the Month in the May 2008 issue of Astronomy Now. Thank you Nik Szymanek for the very nice accompanying write-up 🙂
A couple of weeks ago I imaged La Superba – a carbon star in Canes Venatici. This is only 11 subs at 6-minutes per sub, but you can just make out a few interesting faint fuzzies in the background. I will try for more RGB on this one as well as some infrared data (R72) as well.
The New Forest Observatory makes an appearance in Scientific Computing World this month. Thank you Felix Grant for producing a very informative article.
In an earlier post I showed how I take large terrestrial mosaics (panoramas) using the Canon 40D in a manner similar to taking deep-sky mosaics. Not only does this give you a bigger field of view, it also gives you (ultimately) a very high resolution image. Continue reading
So yesterday it was snow. Today it is hail, rain and sunshine in equal measure. This afternoon this rainbow appeared over the New Forest Observatory. A good omen for 2008??
So after an unbelievably mild winter we get snow on April 6th! Here’s a view of my garden this morning at 7.30 a.m. Now [3.00 p.m.] it is sunny, warm, and the snow has almost completely disappeared.
Further to the Image of the Month below, I did in fact manage to get nearly 5 hours of 750-second subs on that third frame (to the left) for the Markarian Chain mosaic, just a couple of nights ago. The third frame contains M89, M90 and M91 – and the complete mosaic of this region is going to look quite stunning!
You will probably know that Leibniz and Newton, working independently, came up with that torment for schoolchildren and an invaluable aid for engineers, the infinitesimal Calculus. However, did you realise that the formulation of the Calculus, at least that due to Leibniz, had a mystical, rather than a mathematical foundation? Also, were you aware that Newton, during the same period of time, was studying the Bible trying to discover an underlying secret code? Continue reading
