M74 with the Big scope

The spiral galaxy in the image above is known as M74. It is a very nice spiral, but is notoriously difficult to image. It takes a very dark sky to bring out all the details. This image was shot through my SN10, with my Canon 300D. It is about 12 four minute images at ISO 1600, shot guided by a 60mm refractor. I have been doing lots of images with the SNT, since I have had some collimation problems. This is one of the images I used for that, sort of a diagnostic image, if you will.

First Light for Another New Scope...

Here is the first Image taken with my newest addition, a Celestron SC6, intended to take the place of my M500. I heard they were a little easier to image with, and weighed a bit less. Anyway, here is the result of about 30 each of thirty second L/C/M/Y images all shot unguided, with a .5 focal reducer and my DSI Pro Mono.

Not too shabby for the first time out. I think I will keep it a while.

The Deer Lick Group

Yes, I know it is a strange name for a galaxy group, it bears no resemblance to a licking deer. It is named for Deer Lick Gap, if I remember correctly. The Large galaxy is called NGC 7331, or the Deer Lick Galaxy. The other smaller galaxies are all part of the group, but I do not know their names. I took this as part of a test of my scope to make sure I got the focuser squared on straight. I shot it with my Orion DSCI 1, 29 subs all unguided at 30 seconds. It was taken through my Meade SN10 running at F4. The wind was pretty breezy, so my stars look kind of blobby from the scope bouncing around.

I shot it about 20:45 on today's date.

Trifid Up Close

The Trifid Nebula is very unique. It has a red portion where stars are actively being formed inside a cloud of heated hydrogen gas, and a cold blue portion where the light is simply reflected from the stars. I have captured most of it in this close up I did with My Stellarvue 80mm refractor, using my Orion DSCI. Once again, I do not remember the stats. I must get better at that. This is from a series of test shots I did to test out using a Minus Violet filter with a one-shot color camera and an achro refractor. It seems to work pretty well, other than a slight color imbalance. Only a few stars are bloaty blue. For the newbies out there, a big blue-violet ring around the bright stars is the bane of an achromatic refractor. A minus violet filter is made to help get rid of it, but they are normally a visual filter and not a photographic filter.

Spiral Galaxy M74

I shot M74 through my little Stellarvue NightHawk II. It came out pretty good for an achro refractor. I used my Orion Deep Space Imager for this shot, and a strong minus violet filter. I do not remember the stats for the image, but I think it was about a dozen 3 minute images. I am pretty sure I guided these shots.

M74 is a very tough target, especially on a night that is not totally dark. It was quite a feat to locate it in a small 80mm scope.

The Cat's Eye

The little blue object in this photo is NGC 6543, otherwise known as the Cat's Eye Nebula. I will let you guess why it is called that. This is not the best image in the world, but it does bring out some of the colors of this rather small object.

I took this with my DSI Pro using CMY filters. It is a composite of around 25 thirty second images for each color channel. I shot it through my MN66 Mak-Newt uniguided.