Just got back from the Isle of Wight Star Party, had a thoroughly great time as per usual. Stephen, Lucy and Bill did a wonderful job yet again. Good times.
Whilst I was on the island, I captured a few Ha exposures of the Rosette Nebula, and decided to finish it off with some Oiii when I got home. The weather was kind on Monday night, so I was able to grab 14 x 15 minute exposures to go with the 12 Ha exposures I captured on the island.
After a bit of processing, here is how it came out. Very pleased with the result, and it is now entered into the Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition at the Royal Observatory Greenwich. Fingers crossed!
You know that feeling that you are just not happy with something? Well, I've got that at the moment. I wanted to put M42 to bed once and for all. Its a lovely target in our Winter skies, but how many images of M42 does a man need?
This year, I have an excuse though. The H18 and the Televue Genesis give me a 2" field of view. That alone is a good excuse to re-visit the area in my book, so I did. So far this year, I've captured 8 and a half hours worth of data, and thats not including the data I threw away! My official standpoint is 'its getting there' - Ha and Oiii have been the focus so far. I have enough data in those bands now, giving a nice and smooth result. But I don't like the way the Running Man Nebula (to the left of the image) is not showing his true colours. There should be more blue evident in the image that the Oiii filter just is not picking up.
The plan? I want to see if I can capture some Blue filter data before the end of the Winter. With any luck, that will combine well with the Ha and Oiii filter data and finally put this one to bed. And as for the rest of the Winter skies? Once this is done, the Vixen will be going back on the EQ6, and its back to capture this years Messier 1 data to see if I can pickup any changes since last year. I've left it a bit late in the season, but beggars can't be choosers!
Tonight saw my first attempt at capturing 103P/Hartley. It is set to reach Perihelion on the 28th October, and is expected to reach Magnitude 5. It will have to hurry up if its going to do that though!!
Here is a still image - a combination of 30 images combined - 2 minute sub-exposures each one:
And here is a video showing the movement. This is 60 x 2 minute images taken and turned into a movie.
I had a little play with the images I captured the other week. These were taken with the Vixen VC200L and Lumenera Skynyx 2-1C with a 3x barlow. It really was an amazing spectacle to look at too, as I had the flip-mirror in action!
deepsky.org.uk-articles
