Astrophotography

Just checking out the new Tak-130. First image through it. Thirty minutes total exposure.

This is a one hour image composite, 60 x 1 min exposures thru the new Astro-Tech 6" Ritchey Chretien telescope mounted on the Vixen GPD.  I expected more but when you go from 3" ED scope to a 6" RC detail needs longer exposures.  However I did an automatic processing in AIP for Windows and then experimented with additional processing manually.  I will need to get 3-5 hours exposure or more to get more detail.  And experiment with AIP. And I used a diagonal which is a boo boo !

Enhanced in Registax, looks more like other internet images.  Cropped image.

Joe Marzullo, Matthew McCuen and myself took a trip 20 minutes south of Whiting to Coyle Field in Woodland, NJ. The location is used for the US Army paratroopers training, looks like a very large field as in airport! To the south the trees are miles away making the horizon look treeless, no buildings, nothing to obstruct your view. The location is flat, and sandy, also used by model airplane flying. To the east and North there are normal trees but did not interfere with alignment. The clouds came in during the afternoon, and slowly hung around until late evening.

This is a 20 minute exposure of the Black Eye Galaxy, aka M64 Coma Berenices 8.5 magnitude, taken thru Orion 80ED.  Will attempt a two hour exposure next time out.  This particular night was extremely clear, dark skies here in Whiting.

This is when Saturn looks really beautiful and most appreciated.  Too many objections to the way it appears today, round object, a slim thin line crossing left to right or vise versa, unappreciated.  Can't wait for the ring & planet to tilt.  Juptier early in the morning looks much better.  This is a 10x .03 sec exposure.

VDB142 (Elephant trunk) Part of IC1396 emission nebula complex in Cepheus.

This image was taken when I first started imaging thru my 10" Meade LX200 about 7 years ago.   That was when I would try anything (and most of the time it was experimental) to get an image.  Joe Marzullo will back me up.   I usually try the "impossible" or "not likely to work" trial and error routine when it comes to imaging.   For example:  to take this image of a mountain inside a crater along the terminator of a 3 day new Moon,I added a tele-extender with an eyepiece placed inside, add this to my Pentax K1000 35mm camera, place this setup into

M 37 almost overhead this time of year, in Auriga.

M35 in Gemini, looks much better in the eyepiece than it does in pictures.