Friday, November 29, 2013

Binary system galaxies M77 and NGC 1055

http://jeffjastro.com
One of the first results from my outing on 8 Nov 13.  A pair of galaxies that compose a binary system approximately 60 million light years away.  M77 is at the top of the image with NGC 1055 at the bottom.

Full size/details:  http://jeffjastro.com/dso/M77_8Nov13.htm

Binary system of galaxies - M77 (top) and NGC 1055 (bottom).

Sunday, November 17, 2013

Vega...and others

http://jeffjastro.com
So, this was a test shot just before imaging a few objects on the night of 8 Nov 13...right after I took all of my equipment to the backyard, setup, polar-aligned, focused, etc.  Vega was the second of three targets to align the mount with (to get accurate "go-to" slews when going to the objects I am going to image).

What were you doing 25 years ago?  Well, this is what Vega looked like about 25 years ago as it is roughly 25 light years away.  Very bright, so the test with 10min subs have it really over-exposed :)  However, can see some galaxies in the surrounding of this frame if you look hard enough.  This shot was 2x10min Lum frames and 1x5min each RGB.

I am also including the Lum filter only result to better show surrounding objects.  Note that in this test shot, Vega was not "perfectly" centered, so the optical dim ring around the star is not perfectly centered when looking at the Lum/mono image.  On the positive side, each corner shows perfectly round stars from edge to edge in the 2048x2048 uncropped image with these 10 minute frames :)

I am still working on the data for the other objects, so this is just to give you something new to look at in the meantime :)

Vega (distance: 25 light years)
Vega (Luminance filter only, better showing surrounding dim galaxies)

Monday, November 11, 2013

NGC 281 - Pacman Nebula (in HaRGB)

http://jeffjastro.com
Here is the last object from the night of 28 Sep 13.  In fact, I had a short amount of time before the sun rose, so just slewed over to this object without really thinking what kind of result I would get (object dimensions, etc.).  The last few subs I didn't use as the sun was coming up : )

NGC 281 (Pacman Nebula) in HaRGB, 28 Sep 13
TOA-130F, EM200, QSI540wsg
6x20m Ha 3nm (bin1x1); 2x5m ea RGB (bin2x2);