M101 17th April 2010.

Thought I'd try something different tonight.
Here is 2 Hours 40 Minutes of M101.
It's really big! fills the whole image frame. But It's really dim, mag 7.5 compared to M51 which is mag 8.4, doesn't sound a lot but it is when you're imaging.
This is a very quick process minus darks... because I'm still creating them!
5 Minute subs, prime focus C9.25, PHD guiding, works a treat :-) even when the guide scope is crashing into the side of the shed!!! :-0

Earthshine 17th April 2010.

The Moon, Venus and the Pleiades... & Mercury.

and the Moon, Venus & Mercury below.

and a quick M13 with 42 Minutes of data.

M51 - 15th & 16th April 2010 data.

M51 - 11th & 15th April 2010 data.

1 Hour 3 minutes of data. 3 Minutes subs, darks, bias and flats applied.
Current scope setup at the bottom.

Below is 3 Hours 27 Minutes; 8th, 11th and 15th April data combined.

M51 - 11th April 2010

I went out the other night to collect some more data for M51. The only problem was that it clouded over after only six frames worth. Although I did use longer exposures than earlier and increased the time from 2 to 3 minutes.
I thought I'd process the six frames anyway... and here it is. 18 minutes worth, looks promising. (I also realised that one of the custom settings was turned on by mistake the other day).
As I had everything setup it wasn't a total waste because I did produce 30 dark frames, whilst it was cloudy.
Good seeing as well :-/

M51 - 8th April 2010

Last night was nice and clear, so here is 2hours 24min of M51 from last night.
C9.25 at prime focus, using the Tak for PHD guiding.
Two versions and a starless one at the bottom.

Saturn 7th April 2010

Thought I'd use the DMK last night to capture as well as the SKYnyx.
3 x TV Barlow and filter wheel extension.

Venus 5th April 2010

First Venus of the season. 3x TV Barlow and K-Line UV filter.
Very low on the horizon, with trees in the way.

Apollo Saturn V F1 engine paper model.

I must be getting the modelling bug!
Thanks to The Lower Hudson Valley E-Gift Shop.
All I need to do is make another 4... and then we have this!

Saturn 4th April 2010

3 x TV Barlow and RRGB filters. Best 1000 frames from 2000, SKYnynx at max gain about 10FPS.
Size increased by 20%

Hand-Held Hubble: Paper Model

To go with the Hubble pics, you too can build this exciting Hubble Telescope Model (I've got too much time on my hands! I didn't help the kids build this... they helped me!)
HST Model.

Jupiter, Mars & M51 from HST data.

Jupiter from 1995:-




The image of M51 is from a 1.2GB FITS file :-o

(C) Hubble Legacy Archive

More data... HST this time.

The 'Space Telescope Science Institute' has released the fourth major data release (DR4) for the Hubble Legacy Archive (HLA) and it is now available here.
I found the seperate RGB FITS files for this image of M82 here.
Beware! they are rather large files, 589MB each, so you'll need a fairly fast internet connection.
I converted the FITS files in CS4 using the FITS Liberator plugin for Photoshop provided by ESA, and then reduced their size, they're huge!
I then copied them into an RGB file and just tweaked a few settings like 'shadows and highlights' and levels to bring out the details.

Here's my feeble attempt using my equipment.

Long boulder track.

Found this boulder track today from the LROC data in a crater called Romer, which is situated in the Montes Taurus region.
It went across the entire width of the image strip M108998322LC.
They'll have to image more of the area for me to find the start and the end of it!

LROC

Strange linear cloud lines in the sky tonight.

Not quite sure what caused these, they did look odd though.
The nearest that I could find on the web was this.


The UK IR picture didn't show much detail.

Copernicus central peak - LROC data.

My image below; the above peak is on the right of the central peaks.

LROC data now on-line.

If you're a Moon nut like me, or just like like looking at rocks, go to the LROC map below. Where there is 10 Terabytes (that is 10 million Megabytes!) of camera data to sift through. The first formal release of orbiter data.
That got me thinking, I've got over 4 Terabytes of data myself from the stuff I've been doing over the years!!

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) map site.

Below is an extract from image: EDR: LRO-L-LROC-2-EDR-V1.0/M111661378RE CDR: LRO-L-LROC-3-CDR-V1.0/M111661378RC, (just rolls off the tongue) showing one of the slopes of Tycho's central peak.

Tips on using the image browser; Click 'Toggle Layers' (blue panel) and select 'LROC NACs' selection boxes.Select 'Lunar Orbiter Mosaic' radio button then 'Update Layers' button.

Select on right-hand pane the 'Recenter & Zoom' radio button.

When you zoom in enough, you will see red rectangle boxes. Click inside one of the boxes to select the area. An image thumbnail will appear below. Click on the thunbnail and zoom away!

Simples... apart from the fact that you need a high speed internet link, which I have - 50Mb - hehe

M81 & M82 - 7th & 15th March data combined.

Zoomed in on the main characters.

M106 and others from 15th March 2010.

Wide-field of the galaxy M106 in constellation Canes Venatici.
It's interesting to see how many other galaxies there are in this region.

Below is a CGI image taken from "THE SKY6 PRO" of the same area, minus the stars to show the galaxies. Every dot/smudge BTW is a galaxy.

Avatar

We went to see Avatar the other week, great film. If you're going, make sure you see it in 3D though. The 3D effect is not a gimmick and is really rather good.

There's a scene where they land in the jungle and explore the area, the fauna and animals are so well done. You don't know what's real and what isn't. I like the insects and flies, they seemed to be buzzing around right in front of your eyes. It's like the cinema has an infestation.

Quick... sunspot.

K-line filter, SKYnyx and Takahashi.

Lets talk about SIZE.

M31 re-processed from October.

Learning to process all the time, some people say that it's 25% imaging and 75% processing with deepsky stuff, I think that's about right. I'm learning how to do things different all the time!

This has 3Hours and 40mins worth of data.
Takahashi Sky-90, Takahashi F/4.5 Reducer, Canon EOS 50D, DSS, CS4, Noels tools and a Star removing action.

Here's the comparison.

And below is a "Starless" version (minus the stars from our own galaxy).

OT: 'nuff said! (click the 1 million dot below)

.

Amazing Mars video.

This is an animation flying over southwest Candor Chasma on Mars. It was created from NASA's HiRISE DTM and image data by Adrian Lark.

Credit: Adrian Lark

M81 & M82 7th March 2010

Widefield view taken with my Takahashi. NGC 2976 & NGC 3077 are also in the frame, bottom and top right.

Yet another version below of M81 taken the other night (prime focus C9.25), with better gradient removal.
Tip; the background black should never be 0 in ANY of the RGB channels in Phototshop or whatever you use. See below.

RGB Info box.

First Saturn of 2010