Sunday, June 12, 2016

Dome update and new images

It's been a busy year so far...

I added a small room and pier to to observatory for my seldom used Orion Sirius mount. The pier is a 10" diameter, 8' long concrete tube. I had a local welding shop make 2 customized plates to adapt the Orion Sirius. I finished the roll off roof project with a very noisy (sorry neighbors) electric winch. I also finished the outside sheeting and trim overall.  




From the small pier/roll off roof:


3 panel mosaic of the Lagoon and Trifid Nebulas. Taken with a QHY10 OSC and AT65EDQ. 3x1200s per panel/ 3 hours. I plan a 6 panel LUM mosaic with the QHY23/Hyperstar(the big pier/dome) and will use this as color data

From the dome i simultaneously imaged the Lagoon Nebula

The Lagoon Nebula is 8 in Charles Messier's "not a comet" list, 25 in the Sharpless catalog and 6523 in the New General Calalog.(NGC) It is a cloud of ionized hydrogen estimated to be 4000-6000 light years from earth. It can be seen with the naked eye as a gray/green patch in the constellation of Sagittarius..Almost in the center of the photo can be seen NGC 6530, an open cluster of young stars formed from material within the nebula. The entire nebula is roughly 110 x 50 light-years wide.This is a LRGB filtered image taken with a QHY23M mono CCD camera and an 11" Celestron EdgeHD w/Hyperstar on May 31 & June 9, 2016






Jupiter on 4/17/16 just before the GRS(Great Red Spot) entered view. 9:00pm EST 1 RGB sequence. approximately 2000 frames each channel, 800 stacked with AutoStakkert2, processed in Registax 6QHY5L-II & 11" Celestron EdgeHD @F/20


And a few solar shots from the small pier







These 2 images were taken on 4/14 & 4/15 both with a Coronado PST and new QHY5P-IIM. 500 frames each, @ 200 stacked in AutoStakkert2, processed in Registax and PS6