M81 & M82

I tried a deep exposure of the area around the M81/M82 pair with my Zenithstar astrograph. I had earlier the night tried to get a few hours on the California nebula, Unfortunately, a lid on my pc-box blew off and slammed into my mount. Made PHD loose its star and the rest of the frames where "jittery" at best. So I settled for trying this pair without guiding. Just to make sure the same time didn't happen again. I managed to get 4 hours of good exposures.

Tech specs : Pentax K5, ISO 400, 81x3 min unguided, Williams Optics Zenithstar F/4.9 5-element, Celestron AVX mount, 20 flats. Stacked with DSS, processed in PS.

Total solar eclipse of March 20th, from Svalbard

Pentax K5, ISO 400, exposures from 1/4000 s to 1/2 second. Williams Optic Zenithstar 71mm f/4.9 5-element flatfield apo. Berlebach tripod, SkyWatcher Star Adventurer camera tracker set to solar rate.
Click on images to get large sizes.

Combined 7 images to get this one

Today (March 21, I managed to take a photo of the Moon at around 32 hours after totality from Harestua Solar Observatory outside of Oslo. The clouds rolled in, so I only managed this before it disappeared behind a band of clouds.

Rosette once more

Yesterday, I managed to polar adjust the mount a bit better. Autoguiding still acted a bit weird. Have to look into that. But with a proper poar adjustment, I was able to take longer exposures at lower ISO. This would mean higher dynamic range on the camera. I actually haven't tried setting the ISO to its lowst and see what happens, but maybe next time.
The Rosette nebula. I never really payed any attention to this one, since The Orion nebula and the Horsehead was nearby. And the elusive Simeis-147 has been on my list of things I wanted to image. But it is by no means a boring nebula. Beautiful in itself, and quite large. So imaging with even the tiny 71mm f/4.9 telescope, it fills large parts of the frame. It probably could do with twice the exposure, but that will have to wait until I get a few nights of clear sky a little bit earlier in the season. Now it goes too low at midnight or thereabouts. Still getting back into processing. But getting better and rmembering more of the tricks. But still have a long way to go. The image is cropped slightly. Also, minimized the stars to make the nebula stand out more from the background.

Tecch specs : Pentax K5, ISO800, 54x2m30s unguided exposures, Astronomik CLS filter, Zenithstar 5-element apo, Celestron AVX mount. Stacked in DSS, processed in PS and Irfanview.

I also added the red channel here to show how much nebulosity has been recorded. If I could just get this out more precicely and smoother.

Flaming Star nebula

I never tried this before, and when the skies cleared yesterday night, I decided to give it a go. Didn't know how much exposure it needed, and the other objects I wanted to image were already too low for any longer integration. It is obvious the image needs some more exposure, and maybe could use some narrowband imaging. It has been a while since I last did any processing of tricky images, so I will probably need some time to get the hang of it again. And an image like this needs som careful processing. That much is clear. And it probably also needs a lot more exposure to get the dynamics of the nebula right.

Tech specs : Pentax K5, ISO 1600, 120x1min unguided exposures, 20 flats, WO 71mm Zenithstar 5-element apo, Astronomik CLS filter, Celestron AVX mount. Stacked in DSS, processed in PS and Irfanview. Cropped from original image.

Virgo-cluster

It is amazing browsing through the Virgo cluster in the sky. It feels like no matter where you point your telescope, you can find at least a couple of galaxies. Makes you feels small and insignificant. What I glorious feeling. :-)
I shot this image halfway centered around M87. The big elliptical galaxy almost in the centre of this image a bit below the middle. Up to the right is the Markarian Chain. A chain of galaxies like pearls on a string. And dottet around in the image are several Messier-galaxies, NGC-galaxies and probably some PGC-galaxies as well. I haven't checked properly, but I guess there are a couple of dozen galaxies in this single image.

Tech specs : Pentax K5, 150x1min unguided exposures, 24 flats, Williams Optic 71mm Zenithstar 5-element apo, Astronomik CLS-filter. Celestron AVX mount. Stacked in DSS, processed in PS and Irfanview. As always : Click on the image for a full version.

O joy! Lovejoy!

Last night was finally a clear night. And I had to exploit it. I drove out of town and brought with me my two refractors. Wanted to use one as the guider for the other. When I arrived, I found that I was unable to reach focus with the guider camera... And I managed to fail the all star polar alignment several times. So in the end I had to settle for 1 minute exposure with the 71mm Zenithstar. One of the objects I tried my luck on, was comet Lovejoy. I missed it slightly (couldn't remember properly its coordinates. When checking the image afterwards, I see that this was a good thing, since I got a few other interesting objects in the same field of view. Down to the left, a weak red nebulosity can be seen. This is Simeis-22. And almost in the middle of the image, lower half, we can see NGC457, the Owl Cluster. And just up to the right from this, the small cluster NGC436. The tail of the comet didn't excactly show up well, but it is there up to the left on the comet. Click on the image for full size.

Tech spec : Pentax K5, ISO 1600, 10x1 minute unguided exposures, 24 flats, 71mm Zenithstar 5-element APO. Celestron AVX mount. Stacked in DSS, processed in PS and IrfanView.

Rosette nebula with new gear

The total solar eclipse of 2015 is coming up, and I'm going to Svalbard to watch it. So, I needed some new gear that would be easy to bring on a plane. I ended up buying a complete new set of everything. A Berlebach wooden tripod, a SkyWatcher Star Adventurer, and the crown jewel of the pack : A William Optics ZenithStar 71mm f/4.9 5-element flatfield apochromat. As always with WO : Beautiful piece of art and engineering.
The weather has been terrible for astronomy this season. Mostly cloudy or partly cloudy. And if there has been any opening in the clouds, it has been for a short while. On wednesday, the clouds finally departed, and I got a chance to try the setup out for a short while. before the clouds came pulling in again. I opted for the Rosette nebula. The Star Adventurer without autoguider was able to give me up to 30 sec exposures without star trails. I could probably have gone a bit higher, but I settled for that. I managed to collect about two hours of exposures. Some of the frames had to be discarded due to clouds, and some due to satellite tracks or airplanes crossing the line of sight. In the end, I had about 1h45m of imaging data. I tried pulling out as much as possible. Not the best result, for sure. But it is OK for testing the telescope and the tracking performance.

Tech details : Pentax K5, ISO 1600, Astronomic CLS filter, WO Zenithstar 71mm F/4.9, Skywatcher Star Adventurer. Stacked in DSS, processed in Maxim, PS and Irfanview.