Astrophotography

m2 tak toa 130 fl 1000mm

Tak TOA 103 1000mm fl

Taken with newly purchased Astro-tech 6" Ritchey Cretien Thursdy 25th June.
Messier described it as "a nebula which I am sure contains no star". Sir William Herschel used his great reflector and disclosed its true nature as "a most beautiful cluster of stars exceedingly compressed in the middle and very rich".

M106 0ne and one half hour exposure in one minute increments. Full moon rising. Closest Seyfert type galaxy with a black hole at the center and jets.

Again M51 (seems to be popular on this site) taken on Saturday evening when the sky was clear. I notice some dust mites on image, need to clean camera. Just over one hour exposure. Also note that there is another galaxy in the lower right hand corner, 14.5 magnitude IC4263, faint but large.

While some of you were enjoying Riker Hill observing I was out with my Orion 80ED taking images of the Sombrero Galaxy (42 min less time than I wanted due to trees) and M51 just under one hour exposure. This was one of the absolutely dark, clear and possible clearest night of late, on a scale of 10, no doubt a 10. The edge on dark line shows much better in this image than previous Sombrero images I have taken. Hope you like it. Also in the image to the lower left is another galaxy, magnitude 13.7 NGC 4562.

80 minutes on IC-4277 (spiral galaxy edge on, bottom left) and IC-4277 (Irregular galaxy, bottom center) and M51 (the big thingy in middle of the picture)

M51 one hour may 20th.

M101 0n the clear nights we have had this week. This is one hour in one minute stacks. Processed in Photoshop.

Had some clear sky overhead last night. Took a one hour exposure of the Sunflower Galaxy (M63) in Canes Venatici, sixty one minute combined exposures through the TOA 130.