Dusted off the camera and got M51,M13 and ngc4565

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Dave Lillis
Posts: 2757
Joined: Sun Aug 05, 2007 10:02 am
Location: Limerick city

Dusted off the camera and got M51,M13 and ngc4565

Post by Dave Lillis » Sat Apr 13, 2013 5:16 pm

Hi all,
Was outlast for another marathon session and this tried some astro-imaging, first time I've done some DSO imaging in atleast 6-7 years if not more.
I've spend the last while getting the polar alignment fairly good and set up the camera to work at F4-5 on my 12" LX200, this gives me 45 arc minute field of views which is much easier to track. These are as much test images then anything else, to see what I can get out of the setup with a little work and see if its worth putting more work into it.....

M13, single 3 minute exposure it is so so easy to oversharpen this one and make it look fake and un-natural.
Image
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8532/8644 ... 55eb_z.jpg

Ngc4565+ngc4562 , a single 10 minute exposure, this was a very faint one but is a visually impressive edge of spiral, note the second galaxy (smudge) to the lower right
Image
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8266/8645 ... 5500_b.jpg
Believe it or not, this edge on spiral has over 240 globular clusters, imagine the view there, this is one of my favourite galaxies. Messier missed it somehow, its in the Caldwell catalogue as no. 38

M51, Whirlpool galaxy, a single 5 minute exposure,
Image
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8536/8644 ... cf97_z.jpg

M51 could benefit from multiple image stacking to get rid of the noise, infact they all could do with multiple images stacked to bring out more detail. All of these images are heavily cropped so are not the true FOV. I'm probably going to remount the tracking scope on the 12" so I can compensate for tracking errors which are evident in all these images.

I find imaging interesting but very time consuming... the funny thing is that the 2 galaxy images are pretty much how you visually see them through the 20" under a dark adapted darksite sky ....
Last edited by Dave Lillis on Sat Apr 13, 2013 8:29 pm, edited 3 times in total.
Dave L. on facebook, See my images in flickr
Carrying around my 20" obsession is going to kill me, but what a way to go. :)

Roy Stewart
Posts: 531
Joined: Sun Sep 26, 2010 4:29 pm
Location: Meelick, Co.Clare

Post by Roy Stewart » Sat Apr 13, 2013 5:48 pm

Thats some nice shots Dave...

Cheers Roy :D :D
Roy Stewart.

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