Astrophotography

Taken Friday evening 7-25-08 M17Ha 13 min exposure.  Skies hazy but had not stopped the camera from imaging .

This is a 13 min combined image of the Trifid Nebula taken from Whiting on Thursday evening 7/24 at11:30 pm, located in Sagattarius which happens to be low in the South.  Orion 80ED, Starlight Xp camera, Orion Ha Filter on Vixen mount.

Another night of perfect skies, just before the muggy weather comes in this weekend.  Tuesday evening I took M51 combined one hour exposure.  Orion 80ed on Vixen mount.  There is another galaxy lower left hand corner, 14 mag I.C.4263, highlighted in dim circle.

Thursday evening was extremely clear, 10 our of 10, and I always take advantage of a clear night.  Having chosen the object to image I proceeded to take a one hour image of M63 (NGC5055) magnitude 8.5 .  And as usual another galaxie PGC45992 (Principal Galaxies Catalogue) an 14.8 magnitude galaxy located in the image lower right. 

While attempting to image M106 this hour long exposure also shows NGC4220 and NGC4111. I was'nt sure if NGC4111 was an actual object until I found another image of the same area which had shown the same object in the same location.   Next attempt to image M106 will be a guided image thru my CPC11.

Wide Field image shows more

119 minutes combined 1 min images taken with Orion 80ed on Friday May 10 9:30 - 11:40 pm from Whiting NJ .

Having so many features to operate the telescope, I decided not to take the CPC
11 out on Thursday evening. Instead I took the Orion 80ED and the Vixen mount
out to do some imaging. Not having used it since November of 07, I initially
left out one of the setup procedures. (Hehehe). Realizing that every object I
went to did not fit in the eyepiece, I did the setup all over again with the
weight and telescope attached (normally a no-no). But after redoing the
alignment the mount and scope worked flawlessly, all objects near the center of the

The Heart Nebula, IC 1805, an emission nebula, lies some 7500 light years away from Earth. It is located in the Perseus arm of the Galaxy in the constellation Cassiopeia. This nebula is formed by plasma of ionized hydrogen (HII) and free electrons.