Tag Archives: astrophotography

Stunning galaxy group NGC 7172 — Steve Crouch

September 5, 2013 CAS

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 filters

Description

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.

Galaxies range in size from 10 million stars up to 100 trillion! And there are some 170 billion galaxies in the known observable universe… Incomprehensible numbers.

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The Dumbell Nebula, Messier 27 — by Jovan Kulic

August 21, 2013 CAS

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

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Europa eclipsing Jupiter’s Great Red Spot – by Anthony Wesley

August 19, 2013 CAS

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/

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Bug Nebula NGC 6302 in Hydrogen Alpha

June 20, 2013 CAS

By Steve Crouch

This was a quick Hydrogen Alpha of the Bug nebula (NGC 6302) that I took last night in windy conditions. Will try to get some colour soon.

Articles

M94—a strange looking galaxy

June 17, 2013 CAS

By Steve Crouch

I’ve had this data for M94 hanging around a while and wasn’t going to process it because I thought it was pretty poor quality. Anyway I employed the usual astrophotographic data manipulation techniques and came up with something that didn’t look too bad although it would have benefited from a lot more data. Of course you have to remember that this is only a small telescope.

This could be one of the last images from the Arizona telescope as my access is very infrequent now. I can’t complain though because I’ve had a good run.