Friday, November 17, 2006

Crab Nebula (M1) from JMU





Today I received my latest image from the JMU Robotic Telescope in La Palma. A great image of the Crab Nebula with loads of detail. Quite a lot of work by me went into processing the raw data to produce this image along with others with different colour filters.

It's getting cold now outside...puts me off going into the garden...rather be here in my cosy room submitting jobs to the robotic telescopes and processing the results. This is the 'boring' bit of imaging, not much of interest at the moment to see that my scopes can see. Orion is coming, can see it in the South East at Midnight. Should be great to get a chance to image the Orion Nebula and maybe a bit more. Orion is my favourite constellation and the Orion Nebula is quite special.

Tuesday, November 14, 2006

Celestron SLT Mount

After a lot of thought i've decided to to buy a Celestron SLT GoTo Computerised mount. Having read the reviews and visited the Nexstar resource site, I am convinced! It seems that you can't get JUST the mount, you have to get one with a scope fitted.

My plan is to put the Skywatcher ST80 onto the SLT mount and even try the Skywatcher 130. (The 130 might be a bit heavy, but we will see!)

So...i've bought the 60mm SLT which is the cheapest and maybe discard the scope bit...the SLT mount is the same regardless. Now it has arrived, I have put it away for my Christmas present.

Sunday, November 05, 2006

Uranus




Earlier last month Uranus could be seen low in the Southern Sky, trouble is...I can't see it! So I called on the BRT Robotic Telescope to image it for me. You can see Uranus and one of it's moons. Uranus is in the lower left corner.




Tonight is bonfire night, lots of bangs and pops, it's also a full moon shrouded by cloud and smoke. Autumn is here, dark, damp and misty. I'm thinking about buying a Celestron GoTo scope for Christmas. A difficult decision this, will be able to find objects easily with the computer controlled mount but may find imaging disappointing because of the rotation of the Alt- Az mount. I'm wondering if Registax 4 with it's multiple alignment will overcome the imaging problem.

Thursday, November 02, 2006

Comet Swan 2006


The Comet Swan 2006

Here is the first time that I have seen and imaged a Comet!
I remember back in 1997 when the Comet Hale-Bopp was a spectacular naked eye object in the sky, something I will always remember!
Last night was the first clear night for ages, I waited early in the evening for the sky in the west to fully clear then had a go at imaging Comet Swan located in Hercules. Tried different exposures with the Toucam Pro II and ST80 short refractor telescope. The image above is probably the best I could manage, 40 exposures set at 20s frames then processed at multipoint with Registax 4 to stop the stars from streaking. Amazing to see the movement of the comet when you are taking longer exposure images - it really does move with respect to the stars! On reflection I should really have taken longer exposures, maybe one minute subs to try to capture the faint tail of Comet Swan. Tracking of the ST80 with it's EQ1 mount was almost spot-on.

Tonight it is clear again, but we also have a 90% Moon rising early which lights up the whole sky, beautiful to look at, but makes it hard to image Comet Swan.