I’m still struggling with guiding issues, but just to prove my issue is not optics, I again pointed the scope southward where things don’t move around so much and snapped 47 Tucanae last night, just to prove I can manage to take round stars (as opposed to eggs, tadpoles, dumbbells, etc). I personally prefer Omega Centauri, but it’s pretty impressive nonetheless (the globular cluster, not necessarily the image).
10 x 3 minute exposures. Scope: LX200 8″, f/6.7 focal reducer.Camera: SBIG STF8300C
Good astrophotography is completely reliant on reliable tracking by the telescope. You have the mount, your computer, tracking and guidance software, and all the pieces in the chain have to be working and communicating properly with each other. There’s nothing ‘plug-and-play’ about this game and when things don’t go right, it can be incredibly frustrating.
Mark Nickols, despite experiencing such problems, still managed to pull off this nice shot of the Tarantula Nebula, part of the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small galaxy close to ours at about 163,000 light years:
I’m currently battling some guiding issues. In the early hours two nights ago, after some frustrating hours on another target, as an additional experiment I turned the scope to the tarantula nebula. The guiding software refuses to work at all for this target I guess because it is too near the pole and the software complains that the stars are not moving enough too do a calibration. Anyway I got off just a small number of shots before things got very hazy and I had to give up. So here anyway is just 8 x 2 minute stacked exposures of the tarantula – unguided. Could have been centred better but could be worse.
Steve Crouch has come up with this pearler of a galaxy group, with NGC 7172 showing beautiful dust lanes and colour. Look closely and you’ll see at least 40 galaxies in this single photo! With an average of 100 billion stars per galaxy, that’s a heck of a lot of stars…
Catalogue and alternative designations NGC 7172 galaxy group, Hickson 90
Type Compact galaxy group
Position 22 02.0, -31 52
Constellation Piscis Austrinus
Camera and Telescope STXL11002 and 36.8 cm Ritchey Chretien Focal Ratio F9
Exposure Details LRGB 225:45:40:40 Luminance binned 1×1, Colours 2×2 with Baader filtersDescription
This little group of galaxies doesn’t seem to be imaged much. NGC 7172 is lower left of centre (with the dust lane). NGC 7173, 7174 and 7176 form the interacting group just above centre. ESO 466-46 and 466-47 are to the lower right. The bright star is magnitude 6.7.
The Dumbell Nebula is in the constellation Vulpecula, near Cygnus. Lovely work Jovan for a sight very low down through a lot of atmosphere.
Here is my latest image, The Dumbbell Nebula, Messier 27. The data was collected over 2 nights a few weeks ago with the nebula just poking its head over my neighbour’s roof.
Ha 6 x 20 minutes.
RGB 5 x 5 minutes each.
The image is approx. 30 x 40 arc minutes.
Williams Optics GTF 81 mm, Focal Ratio F5.9
Losmandy G11 mount
Atik 320e mono camera
Baader Ha 7nm, R, G, B filters
Murrumbateman’s Anthony Wesley caught Jupiter with the shadow of Europa crossing the Great Red Spot. A great photo for the time and low angle.
Here is a low-res image of Jupiter from this morning showing the GRS and shadow of Europa. The image is IR+G+B. This was taken not long before sunrise from Roma in Queensland with Jupiter at an altitude of about 25 degrees.
You can see more of Anthony Wesley’s astrophotography over on his website at http://www.acquerra.com.au/astro/
