Wednesday 7th September 2011

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Nothing to report, it looks like we’ve had the tail end of hurricane Irene blowing across the UK for the last few days so no chance to get back into the observatory.

I’ve been looking through some of my older posts and updated Jan 2008 to include a piece on a supernova in NGC6946 for which my images were used to estimate the date as I had before and after images from the 16th and 24th January. SN2008S is given as official “birth” date of 01-02-2008 but my image from the 24th January clearly shows the SN to be visible.

After looking through the older images I’m tempted to put the Canon away for a while and see if I can take long guided exposures with the Atik16ic. The problem with the Atik is the small CCD offers much smaller field of view than the big CMOS sensor in the Canon which means that even tiny movements will result in egg shaped stars. I’ll have to dig out by other guide cam …. where did I put that?

All I need is a clear night!

Friday 2nd September 2011

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I haven’t been on here for a while (that’s an understatement!), I could blame the weather but I think that’s only half the story. After building the observatory I struggled to find the time to use it and seemed to have only sporadic clear spells so I’d spend an evening trimming the focus and alignment then not get another clear night for weeks.

I’ve spent some nights in the observatory since finishing the build last year, but I couldn’t get auto-guiding working even after investing in a dedicated guide scope and haven’t really produced anything worth shouting about.  In the last couple of weeks I think I finally have the guiding fixed and have successfully guided for over 3mins with only slightly eggy stars.  Imaging over 5mins totally over exposes due to the light pollution here in South Wales but I think if I can get enough frames at 3mins I should be able to start producing some good images for the gallery.  My collimation is slightly out and I need to invest in a Baader MPCC (not the first time I’ve said that) as the stars at the edge of the field of view suffer badly from coma.

All the images I have at the moment are waiting for processing so I’ll get them on here as time allows, but for now it’s good to be back :)

Comet Garradd August 2011

Another view of Comet Garradd Aug 2011

M81 and M82 14x120secs at iso 800

M101 showing Supernova PTF11kly

Not the best images I’ve taken but I’m working on it. The M101 image was taken between clouds to ensure I had an image of the supernova before it fades. Comet Garradd is getting brighter but not expected to peak until early next year. If it makes it to Mag 6 in September, as predicted, it could become the photographers favourite object for a month or so :) Funny how the one image has it green and the other blue, its all in the processing so maybe I need to redo them.