Board Astronomy (contains big images)

I had another go at the Whirlpool Galaxy. This time alone and with my own Newtonian telescope. Compare to the earlier one a few posts up taken with a refraktor of the same focal length..


Bonus Image:
The comet Atlas (C/2019 Y4) which was onyl discovered at the end of last year but is on it's way to become the third brightest object in the night sky once it approaches the sky (unless it disintegrates first) in may.

 

Both look rather "sharp"!

 

This might be of interest for deep research and fun:

https://hoggresearch.blogspot.com/

 

Kevin Jardine's got a new mapping project in train...

https://twitter.com/galaxy_map/status/1245990887295012864

 

A day too late for the Pink Super Moon.
But close enough and possibly my best lunar image yet.

 

It’s been a while since I posted an Astro picture.
Here is a first attempt at M63, the Sunflower Galaxy.
Named so, because of of it’s shape resembling the flower.
It was the first galaxy with an identified spiral structure with the spiral arms directly emerging from the bright nucleus. that is compared to barred spiral galaxies
It is classified as a flocculent galaxy for the lack of large scale continuous arm structures.
That is only true for visible light, in infrared a clear two arm appearance reveals itself.
Those photons I captured have a nearly 30M lightyears long journey behind them.

 

Space is big.. and that's an understatement..

Also, really awesome moon pic.

 

This always fits...

“Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.”

― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

 

It'd be interesting to know the camera and telescope equipment used to take such photos, exposure times, filters used and so on. I live in a town and the weather and light pollution are such around here that I could never hope to take up astrophotography as a hobby. About 50 years ago, I could see the Milky Way by eye from my back yard. Nowadays, I'd be lucky to see any star fainter than magnitude 3.

 

It's the same here around Houston. Way too much light pollution to see much detail.

On the other hand, you can still take off into the Texas Hill Country - or way out into West Texas and see a LOT more.

 

Most of my images are done with a Newton telescope, 200mm aperture, 1000mm focal length.
My current camera is a Canon EOS 2000D DSLR.
I recently got that one to replace a faulty 60D.

occasionally I use a simple broadband light pollution filter.

I am in an area with with small town light pollution. Could be worse I guess.
It‘s enough to see the major constellations with my bare eyes.
I can not see Andromeda Galaxy or Milky Way Dust lane.
I take a number of 30-60s light images with a number of calibration files to reduce the noise and other imaging aberrations.
I stack the images in the software DeepSkyStacker and post process them in Photoshop to adapt the dynamic range for better visibility of my targets. Also a number of other cosmetic touch ups.

i have returned to the Sunflower Galaxy tonight.
Hopefully without moon and less atmosphere glow and so far no clouds I should be able to collect enough signal to produce a way better image.

 

Thanks for collating that info. It's very interesting. You're capturing some really great images considering where you are located. If I lived in a region with darker skies and my health were better, I'd be tempted to buy a 200+ mm Schmidt-Cassegrain that I could operate remotely. As it is, I can't justify the outlay as I just don't think I could make good use of such an instrument.

 

I've always thought the Sombrero galaxy in Virgo looks great, its up at the moment so you should take a shot of that.

 

According to NASA, M104 should be pretty much due south at 10pm during May between Virgo and Corvus.

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2017/messier-104-the-sombrero-galaxy

Supposedly, you need a 250mm or larger diameter objective to be able to distinguish the dust lane.

 

I am still learning my way around a lens and camera, but I kind of like this shot I got two nights ago of Luna and Mercury. (It's there bottom right )

 

Looks like you are focused on the forest line more than the moon and planet.
A good way to fix that is to zoom in to maximum on a star in your display and change the focus until it becomes as small as possible..
Alternatively, use a Bathinov Mask in front of your lens. Makes focusing a bit easier.

 

Turn autofocus off on the camera and focus manually to infinity? Use a smaller camera aperture to increase depth of field? A larger f/stop requires a longer exposure though as less light can enter.

 

I miss the old days of setting the camera to infinity, holding a bulb for 30 minutes and hyping the film in the freezer!

 

Yeah, the last astrophotography I did was well before the advent of CCDs.

 

https://mysticalraven.com/adventures/18180/northern-lights-displayed-a-legendary-phoenix-in-the-sky it seems these images are from January this year but ... the article was published today so yeah ? OH the Phoenix in the sky what does it all mean... ?