After the last talk of the day, astronaut Don Petit’s “Scientific Advances from What Appears to be Goofing Around in Space,” it was a rush to get set up as the sky cleared and darkened and the sunset winds died down. Re-aligned, re-polar aligned, and started with face-on spiral galaxy M100. Stuck to 6-minute subs for greater reliability (and the possibility of me having dark files to match), and it came out pretty decently! Might go back and fix the coloring a bit. Unfortunately, I discovered that my laptop’s screen is very de-saturated – colors do not look as intense as they do on other screens. It’s an old laptop. So I’ll have to be careful editing on it in the future not to over-saturate; I posted a bunch of pictures on Facebook that looked awful on my phone, haha.
Date: 26 May 20176
Location: Prude Ranch, TX - Texas Star Party
Object: M100
Camera: Nikon D5300
Telescope: Celestron C11
Accessories: f/6.3 focal reducer
Mount: Celestron CGE Pro
Guide scope: Orion ST-80
Guide camera: QHY5
Subframes: 16x360s (1h36m), ISO-1600
Darks: 15
Biases: 20
Flats: 20
Temperature: 47-50F
It’s between constellations Virgo and Coma Berenices, both of which contain massive galaxy clusters. This image contains five galaxies, according to AstroBin. Four are easy to see; the fifth is a little white dot at about the 10 o’clock position, but not that star that’s right on the edge closer to 11 o’clock. The cigar-shaped one on the lower left is NGC 4312. It’s not quite edge-on, but it’s closer. I swear I can see three more galaxies in the lower part of the frame that AstroBin didn’t label.
While images were going, Melody and I went up to the upper field again, and this time we were in for a treat! We hung around the 36” Dob and got to see a few things. First we looked at Arp 330, a string of tiny dim galaxies. I thought I could see a few of the six, but it was difficult. Then, we got to see…M51! This was going to be good. It was nearly overhead, so the Dob was almost vertical, and the ladder was quite wobbly up that high. I brought my face to the eyepiece, and gave a woop! It was so incredible. You could easily see the spiral structure, even the part that appears to connect M51 to the smaller galaxy NGC 5195. It was so bright, and so amazing! The owner of the big scope, I think his name was Larry, said he got the eyepiece that was in there specifically for looking at M51. What a treat!
After we got back down to the lower field, I also looked at open cluster Cronenberger 13, open cluster Collinder 333, and open cluster Berkley 46, which I thought looks kind of like a hand, through Bob’s refractor.
On the Borg, I started with the Rho Oph complex, with the D3200 piggybacked again. I wanted more data on it. Then when the Milky Way came up a little more, I zoomed out to 100mm and did a widefield shot that I wasn’t sure about at first, and it didn’t do well in DSS, but then I processed a single frame, and with some Photoshopping, it came out really nice. It’s already got 18 likes on AstroBin, and two comments!
Date: 26 May 2017
Location: Prude Ranch, TX - Texas Star Party
Object: Milky Way widefield
Camera: Nikon D3200 (Miqaela's), piggybacked on Borg 76ED
Telescope: 55-200mm lens at 100mm, f/5.6
Accessories: NA
Mount: Celestron AVX
Guide scope: N/A
Guide camera: N/A
Single frame, 150s, ISO-1600
There’s a bunch of stuff in here according to AstroBin, but the highlights include M8 and M20 near the top of the frame; the Sagittarius Star Cloud on the left; and M4 in the lower portion, along with a whole bunch more globulars and other clusters well-known stars. I’m quite pleased with it.
I left the camera piggyback and rotated over to the Elephant Trunk nebula later that night, but I can’t really tell which of those dark lanes is supposed to be the elephant trunk part. It’s still quite pretty, and includes the Garnet Star there on the left.
Date: 26 May 2017
Location: Prude Ranch, TX - Texas Star Party
Object: IC 1396 Elephant Trunk Nebula
Camera: Nikon D3200 (Miqaela's), piggybacked on Borg 76ED
Telescope: 55-200mm lens at 200mm
Accessories: NA
Mount: Celestron AVX
Guide scope: N/A
Guide camera: N/A
Subframes: 21x150s (52m30s), ISO-1600
Darks: 20 (fridge darks)
Biases: 18
Flats: 0
Temperature: 46F
Here’s a picture club member Will posted recently from inside his Newtonian (so a much smaller FOV) of the elephant trunk part.
Hmm.
Over on the C11, in the wee hours after getting a reasonable amount of data on M100, I decided I just had to image M51. I was trying to not image the brighter stuff that I can image from home, but I couldn’t resist. I snagged about 12x6-minute subs before the sun came up, and each sub looked better than my previous best M51, so I knew this was going to be good. When I processed it later, my jaw hit the floor!
Date: 26 May 20176
Location: Prude Ranch, TX - Texas Star Party
Object: M51 Whirlpool Galaxy
Camera: Nikon D5300
Telescope: Celestron C11
Accessories: f/6.3 focal reducer
Mount: Celestron CGE Pro
Guide scope: Orion ST-80
Guide camera: QHY5
Subframes: 8x360s (48m), ISO-1600
Darks: 15
Biases: 20
Flats: 20
Temperature: 46F
HOLY COW!! Simply incredible. I couldn’t see any of that wispy gas around NGC 5195 in the subs, and the colors came out just perfect. I am totally thrilled! It’s a little on the noisy side, but the background came out nice. So incredible. I’m so excited!! I’m so glad I decided to grab some data on that.
Also that night, I brought the D3100 and Melody’s ultrabook up to the upper field and set up a two-hour timelapse – that’s as long as my camera battery will last. The vantage point I wanted was too far from an AC power source, although next year I’ll have to work something out because I really want an all-night timelapse up there. I took 30-second frames to get a nice Milky Way, but this only got me 180 frames, unfortunately. But it looks awesome in the TSP compilation video I made! Here’s a single frame I processed.
Milky Way over the upper field at the Texas Star Party
Nikon D3100, 18mm @ f/3.5, 30s, ISO-3200
Beautiful!
And here's the compilation video I made (the upper field timelapse is at the end):
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