M42 (The Orion Nebula) on fire!!! HLA processed by me.

This is my favourite object in the night sky so getting the chance to process it just how I like it was brilliant. Thanks to the Hubble Legacy Archive anyone can.
I just HAD to post this image.  It may not be to everyone's taste but its how I like it.
Read below for details of how I obtained and processed it.

The original data for this image was downloaded from the Hubble Legacy Archive website ( http://hla.stsci.edu/ ). I downloaded three fits files. Basically that's  a set of red, blue and green (RGB) images taken by the Hubble telescope. I combined these black and white images using a free program called FITS Liberator and they just burst into colour. I wanted the nebula to look as if it was so active it was on fire, so I pushed the saturation to enhance the red. The Tiff file I produced was a massive 324 million pixels!! and it seems like you can keep zooming in forever, seeing incredible detail. I have also processed some others deep sky objects with great results. So if its cloudy and raining outside have a go!!!!

Leo Triplet 8th March 20014

I'm currently in the process of fine tuning my DIY Barn Door start tracker and its taking all my stargazing time at the moment. I grabbed this image last night after a 2 hours tracking test.
 Its a single exposure with no darks or lights and not stacked, so its a bit grainy and the light pollution was bad. However I quite like it (and the stars are fairly round). Exposure time was 2 minutes and 21 seconds at ISO 400 using an f4 200mm lens. I always use mirror lockup to avoid mirror shake. I'm really pleased with the tracking ability of this home made tracker however I'm currently working to eliminate a slight vertical drift over 2 hours. Whilst its not noticeable with a wide angle lens it equates to about 8 pixels using this 200mm lens.
This cluster of galaxies can be found in the constellation of Leo about 35 million light years away.
 Top left is NGC3628 and to the right is M65 whilst bottom centre is M66.
 I am hoping to blog the design and details of this star tracker as soon as its finished as it may be of use to others trying to build a home made star tracking mount.

Last nights Jupiter with Red Spot and Io

Thw shadow of Jupiter's Moon Io with its 400 active volcano's can be seen as a black dot transiting just above the great red spot.

 I was surprised at how quickly Io raced across Jupiter.
In the second image you can see that Io has moved slightly faster than the GRS.

Taken with Meade Etx 105pe and a £30 microsoft cinema lifecam webcam at 10 fps. Captured in sharpcap and processed with Pipp and Registax using the best 910 images from 1400 I think this is the best I can do with Jupiter with this setup.

Last Night's Orion Nebula near a very bright Moon 20130110.

I am still amazed at the images I can get with an old DSLR, two bits of wood and a microprocessor.

This image was taken last night as part of my Arduino driven Barn Door Tracker project.

19 thirty second exposures & 20 darks in a light polluted sky with a bright moon nearby. I think the brown glow is due to the Moon?

 I think I have finally got the mechanics, electrics and programming right. My barn door mount now tracks with the correct acceleration for the correct time, correcting for the straight threaded rod drive. Any errors I have seem to be in the accuracy or not of the polar alignment to the NCP.
During the evening I took about 130 images, all with pretty round stars.

Pleiades or Seven Sisters or M45

The weather is so cloudy wet and windy I decided to look at this image taken last week using my Arduino driven barn door mount.

It surprised me to see its similarity to the Plough (Ursa Major). This group of stars are travelling through a dust cloud giving them this blue glow.

M42(Orion nebula) using my DIY Barn Door Tracker.

After 8 months of researching, building and learning to write code for a microprocessor, I finally got into the garden to test my Arduino driven, straight rod Barn Door mount.

 Its not only more portable and faster to set up (including polar alignment) than my Meade Etx 105, its also more sturdy . I have used the Meade tripod for stability along with my home made wedge which is now used on both barn door and Meade. This image was taken on a Canon 40D with 70-200 f/4 lens @ 200mm. I was really interested on the roundness of the stars as this would indicate that my calculations and programming for driving the mount were out. Tonight also was very windy so I was delighted when I staked only three 30 second images to reveal this image.

Geminid meteor shower 2013

Taken using a canon 40D with a 17mm f2.8 lens. 20 second exposure @ISO 400.
This year shower was really good with 5 or six meteors in quick succession followed by a lull for a few minutes then half a dozen more. The weather had been cloudy all week but at 10pm the clouds melted away leaving a still cold and clear night. Jupiter was shining brightly in the constellation of Gemini with Orion between it an the moon. I tried to catch a meteor crossing Orion and this was the closest I could manage. As I was setting up the camera a very large meteor passed right through the viewfinder. It sounds like a fisherman's tail of the one that got away but its true.

Tonight's Moon Halo.

Tonight's moon halo was extra bright so I just had to get a shot. Its supposedly 22 degrees in diameter and caused by ice crystals high in the atmosphere.

 

Perseid meteor shower 20130812

This years Perseid meteor shower was really good. With the darks sky at Durlston Country Park and few clouds I saw many of them shooting across the sky. Taking a picture of one is quite difficult as although radiate from the north east they seem to appear anywhere in the sky. I found that it was best to point the camera straight up and hope. I took many shots and only managed to capture this one flying past the summer triangle (Vega, Deneb and Altair). Thanks to the dark sky, the image also contains some of the Milky Way which run through the summer triangle. The large dark streak running from Deneb top left to Altair at the bottom is called the Cygnus Rift for obvious reasons.

The Milky Way 20130812

The Wessex Astronomy Society held one of their Astro evenings at Durlston Country Park. Its a nice dark sky, particularly to the south as its right on the cliff tops at Swanage in Dorset. A very big crowd were there to see the Perseid meteor shower which was great but the Milky Way was very noticeable and I could not resist a 30 second RAW exposure at f2.8 ISO 1600.
Its such a treat for me to see it as I live in Poole which is very light polluted.

If you look carefully you will see the constellation of Sagittarius low down in the sky.
Within the constellation are eight bright stars that make up the well known asterism know as the TEAPOT. I've marked it on the image below.
Also in this area is the centre of our galaxy (the Milky Way) which is about 27,000 light years away in the direction marked with a circle containing "MW CENTRE."