New Forest Observatory ®

December 2016 Deep-Sky Image of the Month

Posted on December 1, 2016 by Greg Parker

Got the final bit of data on this one last night. This is a 2-framer using the Canon 200mm prime lenses and Trius M26C OSC CCDs on top of the Paramount ME.

Main North America frame is 9 hours and 40-minutes total using 20-minute subs. The right hand frame (with Deneb) is 10 hours and 20-minutes total data time using 20-minute subs.

The ONLY negative thing with the 200mm lenses is the bad ghost flaring from any bright stars in the image. This makes it an ideal imager for regions like IC2087 where there are hardly any stars (let alone bright ones) to be seen.

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17 hours on the NGC6914 region in Cygnus

Posted on November 9, 2016 by Greg Parker

I managed to get a further 10 hours to add to the initial 7 hours taken using the Sky 90/M26C array – 20-minute sub-exposures.

I don’t think that the additional 10-hours added much in the way of depth to this image, but it did mean that I didn’t need to use any noise reduction like I had to with the 7-hour image. This is worth remembering for future “marathon” imaging sessions. Probably not worth going beyond the “magic” 8-hours per frame.

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The Double Cluster – yet again

Posted on November 8, 2016 by Greg Parker

I just can’t keep away from this region, and as there was a half-Moon up until 11 p.m. last night, a star cluster seemed like a good idea.

This is another one of those images I have had in my mind for over a decade. This would take an 8-framer with the Sky 90s and I never had a good enough run of weather to get it all done in one season. However, it is only a 2-framer with the Canon 200mm prime lenses, so it can be done in a single evening using those.

A 2-framer with the Canon 200mm prime lenses and Trius M26C OSC CCDs, each frame is around 3-hours total exposure time using 450-second subs.

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Earth Science Picture of the Day (EPOD)

Posted on November 7, 2016 by Greg Parker

Got today’s EPOD with the North America & Pelican nebulae image that you can see just a couple of posts below.

Cramming so many stars into such a small image size makes it look like the Milky Way stars aren’t resolved. But if you zoom in on the image you can in fact clearly see right down to the smallest individual star.

Many thanks again to Jim at EPOD for continuing to publish my work. That is EPOD number 84.

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The NGC6914 region in Cygnus

Posted on November 5, 2016 by Greg Parker

Last night I got 7 hours of 20-minute subs on the NGC6914 region using the Sky 90 array. The result is shown here. As it is clear (and now Moonless) I am going for a bunch more 20-minute subs tonight to see if I can improve the image at all. The first bit of real experimental imaging work I have carried out on the Sky 90 array since putting it all together.

I have a feeling I know what next month’s Image of the Month might turn out to be.

Posted in Deep Space Objects, mini-WASP Array, Sky 90 and SXVF-M26C | Leave a comment

Sadr one and a half framer

Posted on November 4, 2016 by Greg Parker

From the end of October I managed to get a one and a half framer of the Sadr region using the 200mm lens array.

It should of course had been a 2-framer but I only shifted the frame by half a frame horizontally 🙁

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New Forest Observatory – Image of the Month

Posted on November 4, 2016 by Greg Parker

A couple of nights ago I managed to grab 24 x 20-minute subs of the M52 region using the 2 x Canon 200mm prime lenses and 2 x Trius M26C 10-Megapixel OSC CCDs. I had to shut down for an hour in the middle of the imaging run when a cloud bank came over, and I was not very precise in setting up the frame after the meridian flip which is why the image is a lot narrower than it should be. Still – “claws” can be seen (just) and the Bubble and M52 came out reasonably well.