Observing Highlights - Jul-Dec 2006

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I took another image of the Orion Sword region last evening with the idea of testing how well the upgraded HEQ5 was tracking. Tracking was very good at 2 minutes and the 4 minute exposure showed only a bit of mistracking. All exposures were useable and gave a fairly good image. The running man shows up well as does the faint nebulosity of the outer regions of M42. The center of M42 is overexposed so I tried combining with my previous best to see if I could capture a wider range of intensities. The result is the second image which represents my personal best for this target. John McDonald

Went to the hill with Charles, Bruno and Guy last evening and planned to test the upgrade of my HEQ5 mount. The mount worked quite well and I have now joined the ranks of the lazy astronomers with goto capability. During testing I also tried some exposures of the Rosette Nebula and the attached image is the result. It had a total of 13 minutes of exposure which is not a lot for this diffuse target so the image needed some fairly aggressively processing. I am pleased that I was able to tease out some of the beautiful nebulosity.
Processing - Images Plus, Photoshop and NeatImage. John McDonald

Here are my first 2 images captured last fall, Processing was done in Jan. 07, after purchasing Images Plus. Many thanks to John and Charles who helped me do this first stacking effort. I'm sure that with more time, I'll be able to further develop my processing skills.

Transit of Mercury & Sundog - Nov 8, 2006

Clear Sky Clock looked really good for Victoria this morning so off I went. I got half way up the Malahat when Joanne gave me the bad news. Clear Sky Clock for Victoria is now looking dismal. U-Turn on the Malahat and high tail it for Nanaimo. Sun in a cloud bank.

Turn around at Nanoose Bay.. the sky breaks a bit...stop at Nanaimo park way rest stop. I got about two hours of sucker holes and some very good views of Mercury...Yes. I am happy ...fluffy clouds replaced by high haze...Oh well made for a nice Sun Dog.

David Lee, Guy Walton and myself observed the Transit of Mercury from Observatory Hill this morning under cloudy skies.  We were treated to enough sucker holes in the clouds to allow us to both observe and photograph the first part of this event.

Personally, this was thrilling - my first transit, and my first Transit of Mercury!

As you will see, the photographs have poor resolution due to all the cloud we were shooting through, but the progress of the Transit is clearly visible (7 o'clock position), as is the quite large sunspot (8 o'clock position).

My latest image of Comet Swan was taken Monday evening when David Lee and I travelled to Sandy Barta's place to find some dark sky. The dust tail is super long (over 3� in this image), and if you look closely you will see a short ion tail just to the right of the big one. The head of this comet is so huge and bright, I could easily spot it in my finder scope. The image shows the head is not perfectly round, which indicates the comet is fragmenting. The bright star below the comet is 58-Epsilon Herculis.

Guy and I were treated with excellent viewing conditions last night at the DAO. We both imaged comet SWAN and here is my result. The tail of the comet is so long I could not frame it all!

Here are my images from last night at the Old 16" Site at the DAO.
Camera: Nikon D50, modified with removal of the IR filter and replaced with clear glass.
Telescope: Orion 100, f9 ED Apo Refractor on SkyWatcher HEQ5 mount.
Processing: ImagesPlus, PhotoShop CS2 and Noise Ninja.
Exposures:
Comet Swan: ISO 800, 44 Light Frames and 18 Dark Frames.
M 33: ISO 1600, 30 Light Frames and 15 Dark Frames. Color balance was made in ImagesPlus.

This image is taken through the fog that has been back lighted from the lights on the playing field just west of Observatory Hill. You can see a hint of a tail and some dust on my CCD sensor. This is the first light for my modified Nikon.

Taken: 20 October 2006 from Bruno's backyard in Oak Bay.

Taken at home in Courtenay.
RGB each 30 minutes using a 155mm refractor at F5.25 with an ST4 autoguider

This image is taken through the fog that has been back lighted from the lights on the playing field just west of Observatory Hill. You can see a hint of a tail and some dust on my CCD sensor. This is the first light for my modified Nikon.
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Camera: Nikon D50 modified and controlled with ImagesPlus on a laptop
Telescope: Orion 100ED, f9 on HEQ5 mount
Processing: 30 light frames and 10 dark frames in ImagesPlus, Photoshop CS2 and Noise Ninja.

Taken: 20 October 2006 from Bruno's backyard in Oak Bay.
Optics: TeleVue NP-101, f/5.4 on Losmandy G-11.
Camera: Canon 20Da
Exposures: 60 light frames of 60 sec @ ISO 800.
Processing: ImagesPlus, Photoshop and Neat Image.

With a few clouds and fog conditions, I was able to capture 20 light frames of M31. Many thanks to Charles for his help and introducing me to Images Plus Processing... This is my first attempt... just aligned and stacked... Now to learn about PhotoShop

I managed to use 9 images for this stacked image of Comet C/2006 M4 Swan. Canon 30D, 30 seconds, ISO 3200, Canon EF 400mm f/5.6L telephoto operating at f/6.3, piggybacked on my LX-200R tracking on the comet. Processed using ImagesPlus, sigma clipped average 1.4, and NeatImage.

There is a hint of twin tails at the 1 and 2 o'clock positions in the image. Considering the brightness of this comet's core, it should yield spectacular images if we can find darker skies and acquire more images.

Joe Carr

I took the attached photo on my way home from work. While it is not an "astro photo" as such, it does relate to the heavens.

The camera is a Nikon D70s on a tripod - no tracking.

Several members had a good observing session atop Observatory Hill on Friday night. We enjoyed wonderfully warm temperatures as we were above the fog bank enveloping much of the city, and the air was quite stable - a bonus for those of us who are astrophotographers.

I decided to image one of Malcolm Scrimger's favourite Open Clusters, NGC7789 (20 sec, ISO 3200). This was a relatively easy target with my Canon 30D at prime focus on my 8" Meade LX-200R. There are a remarkable number of red stars in this cluster, but it still has a good number of blue and white stars visible as well. A very interesting cluster.

I also had time to take images of the Splinter Galaxy (using the same setup), one of many objects Blair was hunting down with his 12" Dob. This faint object was more difficult to photograph, but I managed to obtain 14 images I could stack, and a reasonable image resulted. Joe Carr

This is pushing the season but I got up very early this morning (3:45am) and Orion was so beautiful I set up in the back yard and imaged it. The result is attached. It is a bright object but the range of intensities is extreme so I used a combination of exposure times and combined the results. In the shortest exposures the trapezium was well resolved but it sits on such a bright region it does not show up in the final image as much as I would like However it is just visible.

Taken in Merritt at the star party.
RGB each 15 minutes using a 155mm refractor at F5.25 with an ST4 autoguider

I took this image last night at the old 16" site. I used my 102mm, f5 Antares achromatic refractor. Except for some chromatic aberration on a few of the bright stars, it is my best of the Andromeda Galaxy area.

I am still a fan of wide field views of the sky and am attaching two views of M57 that I got last evening at the DAO. The first is a full frame image with my Williams Optics 105mm with 0.8x focal reducer for an effective focal length of 588 mm. As you can see the ring is really tiny but I like the sight of it this way, a jewel that you have to look for or you may miss it. The second image is a crop to get a better look at the nebula itself.

Charles and I went to the hill last evening and enjoyed better than advertised conditions. The Temperature was 13 deg. C, there was no wind and the sky was clear with good seeing. I tried imaging M51 and got 39 minutes worth of light frames (39x 1min exposures). After processing I did a weighted average combination with the 10 minute exposure image I got at the Sask. Summer Star Party.

Location: in Courtenay
Imaged with a 155mm refractor at F14
SBIG ST-8i camera with a color filter wheel
Red 30 minutes, Green 30 minutes, Blue 50 minutes
All images with dark frame subtracted
Contrast enhanced in Photoshop Elements
Colour temperature increased by 4500�K (by Joe Carr)

Les Disher

Several members observed the SMART-1 lunar satellite impact from Observatory Hill.  I used my Meade LX-200R 8" and the Meade LPI imager to take a total of 1,584 jpg frames covering the event from 10:37:48pm to 10:49:28pm PDT. The image to the right links to a 2 minute video extracted from the middle of this sequence, covering the event 1 minute either side of the impact, which occurred at 10:42:15pm PDT.

I had a great time at the Pearson College picnic. The sky viewing was fantastic - nice and dark.

Malcolm Scrimger

Location:Saskatchewan Star Party 2006

Andromeda Galaxy - August, 2006

This is my personal best for M31. I benefited from a very clear dark sky at the Saskatchewan Star Party 2006 and some inspiration from Jack Newton.

I took this picture of the Iris Nebula from Cattle Point on Thursday night. The small reflection nebula (10' x 8') is located in Cepheus and surrounds a 7th magnitude star. Of interest in this picture is the Mira-type variable star T Cephei (HD 202012). Look for the bright reddish star located in the bottom left corner of this image. T Cephei has a period of 388 days and fluctuates between magnitude 5.2 and 11.3.

Malcolm Scrimger and myself observed from Cattle Point until the Moon rose, giving us about 1.5 hours of dark skies. This is the deepest image of Andromeda I've achieved to date, and is also my first guided astrophotograph. Joe Carr

After doing the image of NGC 457 (ET cluster) earlier, I wondered if the color of the stars could be brought out better. My earlier attempt used 60 sec. exposures that overexposed the brighter stars so I tried again last evening taking exposures of 1 sec and 15 sec to combine with the 60 sec. ones. This image is a combination of all three and I think it does capture more of subtle colors fairly well.

Last night Joe, David, Charles, Guy and I were at the 16" site and I took the attached image of the ET (Owl) Cluster. Given the ET connection I thought I could get a little fanciful in the processing and added diffraction spike using Astronomy Tools.

Last night was great and for those that are scared of a nearly full moon, we had very good seeing conditions plus a nice warm evening [on Observatory Hill].

I had some success last night at Cattle Point. This is an image of the Eastern Veil Nebula that is a crop of combined frames from June 26 and July 27. Like the Western Veil which I imaged recently, this subject is faint enough that it is pushing what is possible with my camera.

Here is an image of our old friend Andromeda Galaxy M31 & M32.  The detail in the dark lanes of M31 are the best I've achieved so far.

Taken: from the DAO, the old 16" site. 67 light frames of 60 sec @ ISO 800

I have tried to image parts of the Western Veil on two occasions and the image shown here is a portion of the section near the star, 52 Cygni from a combination of two of them. This nebula is quite faint in my camera and could use a lot more exposure but I was pleased to get as much as I did.

John and I had exceptional seeing conditions at Cattle Point, so I was able to expose part of the Gamma Cygni Nebula (IC 1318) for over 60 minutes. Notice the open cluster NGC 6910 on the left.

I went to the DAO last night and set up at the old 16" site. I have captured part of the large emission nebula IC 1396 located in Cepheus. North is up in this picture. The bright double or multiple star in the centre of the frame is SAO 33626. To the right of it is VdB 142 which is also known as the elephant's trunk nebula. The dark nebula Barnard 161 is located north of SAO 33626.  Two more dark nebulae, B163 and B365 are also visible in the bottom of the frame.

Another image from last night. M52 and the Bubble Nebula (NGC 7635) located in Cassiopeia. A Televue PowerMate was used for this shot.

Last night, I finally got my CEQ mount polar aligned so it tracked quite well. Here is another M31. The camera framing cut off the star cloud to the extreme right.

Last night on Observatory Hill I decided to concentrate on imaging each of the two Messier objects M81 and M82 individually. Here is the M82 Cigar Nebula image after processing. 

I'm not nearly as pleased with this image as the M82 image (above).  This object will obviously require many more 30 second images, and/or a longer exposure than 30 seconds.  The low surface brightness makes it a difficult object to image using a dSLR at f/10.

I have found that the brighter Globular Clusters can be observed from my light-polluted location at home, so given that we were at the Centre of the Universe with an almost Full Moon staring at us, I decided to try imaging M3. 

It was kind of windy yesterday night at Cattle Point. But by midnight the wind had subsided. I was hoping to get the whole of the Veil Nebula in the frame but came short. The western segment of the Veil Nebula (NGC 6960) is on the right side of this image. The bright star is 52 Cygni. NGC 6967 and 6974 are visible on the left.

Saturday was a great night at the DAO. Seeing conditions were exceptional and I focused my attention on the North America Nebula in Cygnus.

Here is a relatively wide field image of the Dumbell nebula from last night at Cattle Point. It was another wonderful night although the wind made it difficult to do high magnification imaging. I resorted to doing a wide field of the Dumbell and have attached a cropped version that still covers a relatively wide field (about half the full frame by width).

M42, Orion Nebula - 2006

Earlier this year I took this image of M42 with the Centre's Takahashi and Meade's ill-starred Deep Space Imager, then promptly forgot about it until recently. The Tak's drive was not working properly so I simply hoped for the best.

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