Wow! Loving the widefield!

Well I thought I'd try something new tonight, as a change from the rigours and constant setbacks of deep space guided imaging. I set of on a brief sojourn into the garden, taking nought but a camera, a small, cheap lens and a few whatsists and doodads upon which to balance my meagre equipment.

Well, I must say that despite the simplicity of the arrangements I was gob-smacked by the rather beautiful results, if indeed I do say so myself. Laying down the thousands of pounds worth of equipment with which I have encumbered myself of late, was a decision most rewarding, as I hope to show with these quick pictures. Sure they are noisy, oft the focus soft, and indeed there is a hint of trailing in the stars, but they truly show what can be done with the most rudimentary of equipment (for example, the camera lens was propped up on my wallet and a bunch of keys in place of a real tripod!).

Here we go:

The view over the Dyfi Estuary - 29/042013

The Plough Asterism in Ursa Major - Note the double stars Mizar and Alcor in the 'handle'.

The sky to the west

The sky to the west with mountains, the estuary, and a really unfortunately placed telegraph wire!

Quick info for posterity: All taken at ISO 3200 with 30 sec exposures. Canon 1100D with kit 18-55 lens. Booyah!

Cloudy days make work for idle hands....

At the kind request of a regular reader (thanks Maurice!) I've decided to show off the lovely Skywatcher 300P that I'm 'looking after' at the moment. It really is a lovely beast, so I should share it's glory with you all, rather than just touting my own work and letting its awesome size slip by unnoticed. Here he is, El Diablo:

Skywatcher 300P on Synta NEQ6 Pro (right) and TS Optics 6" on Synta EQ5 (left)

Comparison for size: That swarthy looking fellow is roughly 5'11". The 300P is 1.5 metres long!

I've also included a brief video of the 'scope slewing. It demonstrates nicely how quick the GOTO system can move a setup like this, and hopefully illustrates why such a system is useful, particularly when setup time with this beast takes so long!

The program in use is 'Cartes-du-ciel', an excellent free program which is simple to use and comparatively easy to synchronize if you wish to use it to control your telescope. It will also require the use of the ASCOM platform (ver 6) and EQMOD, another free patch which enables Cartes-du-ciel to communicate with the mount. You will also either need a Synscan (ver 3 or later) handset and a USB-serial adapter, or a USB mount interface, such as the Hitec Astro EqDir. Sorry for the rubbish production values in the video. I think it's clear I should remain an astronomer, never an entertainer!

Oh you just keep getting better!

Well, well. Once again we've been out with the Mega-beast. However, the AstroGods (sic) have been at it again, so seeing as we had such an awfully good session the previous night, we therefore paid with a lot of fiddling and funny results this time around.

However, all was certainly not lost.

Things started with difficulty - focus is remaining as an issue (really must make a Bhatinov mask!) and upon inspection of diffraction rings whilst out of focus, it appears we have a collimation issue to boot.

Regardless of these however, we plunged on, the trusty NEQ6 beeping and whirring as it sped its way around the cosmos above. Even after a couple of nights of use, what really strikes me about this piece of kit is its fluidity of movement, its graceful execution of this mind-bogglingly complex task. Whilst it may seem simple for a human to point a telescope at a particular part of sky, one must remember that this mechanised observer has no eyes and yet predicts the position of over 50,000 celestial objects using only a simple clock and a couple of motors. Impressive stuff.

Our first target then, at the request of my cousin: M104, the Sombrero galaxy, a real looker, at least when Hubble's taking the pictures. At a distance of around 30 million light years, this is no next door neighbour, and not a simple target, even for the Gigantoscope we've been using. Undeterred, we aligned the scope (turns out that if the result of the alignment "may be poor" it's pretty damned good. If it's "successful", it may be poor) and set off for the reaches of the Sombrero, and the faint fuzzy dropped neatly into view. After a frustrating focusing furore we were ready for the pictures, and here's what we got:

50 frames of 45 seconds each, unguided at ISO 800 and 20 dark frames. We attempted flats but they failed, so maybe next time.

M104: The Sombrero Galaxy in Virgo

Not an amazing shot, but the best we can do without guiding. Still though, you can see the huge dust belt that circles this lovely galaxy and the bright core within which lies a gargantuan black hole similar to that in our own galaxy. I really look forward to returning to this target when guiding becomes available.

Now, onto the winner of the evening. If you've read yesterday's post, you'll be familiar with my glowing appraisal of M13 the Hercules Cluster. Well, now you can see for yourself why I adore this cosmic jewel-haul quite so much. Once again, bad focus and collimation, but still it's a beautiful cluster.

21 frames of 45 sec at ISO 800, once again with 20 darks:

M13: The Hercules Cluster

Around 300,000 stars litter this glorious cosmic landscape, with the stars like twinkling dust on the velvet of night. I think it's plain to see why I set so much score by this cluster, and I'm delighted that I can finally show you something which I'm reasonably content with!

Where to start?!!!!

Yesterday was quite a day. I'll attempt to start at the beginning, which is actually the night before!
It began on Tuesday night, when myself and AstroCousin tried to get my rig auto-guiding. Now I've been working on this for ages; getting the mount sturdy and well balanced, calibrating and locking into position the finder-guidescope, working out how to get the communication between the guidance software (PHD) and the mount's handset. Well all of this had worked individually over the preceding weeks and I thought it was time to get it all going for real. So we set up, found a target, went to guide and....nothing. Camera refuses to send commands to the mount. Right, well we stripped everything down, checked all the wiring, checked the soldering from the earlier modifications. Everything checked out fine but the camera just wasn't sending the signals, even though the PC was receiving an image. So it seems like the part of the camera that's connected to the mount is kaput.

Well that all put me in a pretty bad mood, as I've been fiddling with all this for months now. But then, something incredible happened! A friend called to say that he needed somewhere to store his telescope, and I grudgingly (ha!) agreed, on the proviso that I could use his wee-beastie. Well ladies and gentlemen let me tell you when I saw this colossus I was filled with lust, oh yes.
It's a 12" 1500mm focal length (f/4.9) monster on an NEQ6 Synscan mount. Fully GOTO and with more light gathering power than a herd of Hubbles, it looks like some kind of nuclear warhead launcher, and that's before you even turn it on.

Switching on was the hard part. After manhandling the enormous beast into it's brackets and tightening all the nuts, it was time to align with Polaris and fire the cannon up. Nothing doing. Did we need two power sources; one for the mount and one for the Synscan handset? No, that didn't help. Did we need a higher current supply? Nope. Turns out that although they put two power sockets on, you only use the one, which powers both units.

OK so we had juice. Next, the 3-Star alignment. Well...'mixed bag' is about the best description I can give our experiences of this process. However, once we'd correctly aligned the scope, found suitable guide-stars and tweaked our method, we finally had something we could work with.

When the NEQ6 slews with the giant telescope aboard, it really is as if we're targeting North Korea with a huge missile. The lumbering beast swivels neatly into place with unearthly and high-tech sounding beeps and whirs, demonstrating the presence of precision gears and controllers at work. Each time it effortlessly picks out our target and beeps satisfyingly, as if locked on and ready to fire. One half expects that beep to be succeeded by the rat-tat-tat of heavy gunfire or the roar-whoosh of an intercontinental ballistic missile launch.

Instead though, one looks into the eyepiece, and what riches one finds there! First, we visited an old favourite of mine (and everyone else's methinks), M42, the Orion Nebula. I chose this as a) I knew what I was looking for and b) it's a hard target to miss. Well it was lovely. The trapezium leapt out with four clearly defined and well separated stars. There was nebulosity aplenty and the full field of view was filled with that wispy blue smokiness that M42 lovers are so familiar with.
Then came M51, the enchanting Whirlpool Galaxy. This was the first time I had ever seen structure in a galaxy through the eyepiece. The spiral arms were clearly visible, and though I'd expected the evening to remain purely observational, I knew at this moment that we'd be taking a photo of this later on. For now though, we continued with naught but our eyes (and £1600 worth of telescope!). Next to Saturn, which leapt from the eyepiece in glorious colour. At 150x magnification it stood out beautifully against the darkness, three small moons accompanying it. The gap between the rings and the planet was visible even in the weakest eyepiece, and became a gulf under higher power. Also evident was the shadow of the planet upon the rings where they curved away behind the globe. I've seen Saturn many times before, but this was really something special. We even managed to persuade a 'wow' out of my usually under-awed sister-in-law who was persuaded out to see the twinkling edifice, and even more surprising from my wife as well!

From there we ventured to M64, the only mediocre target. It was still lovely of course, standing boldly out against the night, but we'd recently been wooed by the majesty of the Whirlpool, and so we moved quickly on to M13, the Hercules cluster, and that really was a wonder. Clear individual stars peppered the eyepiece, a million jewels sparkling brightly in the dark. The 'propeller' was visible too, a faint three-pointed dimness against the brightness of the cluster. More and more we magnified the cloud of twinkles, and more and more detailed it became, unlike anything else I've ever seen through a telescope. It was one of my favourite targets before, but now even more so.

Finally, it was time for a picture. In went the camera and we fiddled to get a rough focus. A quick 15 second exposure showed the cores of the two galaxies, and 30 seconds revealed detail in the spiral arms. In the end we settled for 75 exposures (25 were thrown out leaving 50) of 45 seconds each at ISO 800, with 25 darks. Unfortunately the focus was a bit soft, so we'll need another shot at this, but the result is still awesome, and here it is, taken with a Canon EOS 450D:

So all in all, an awesome evening. I think we were both suitably mind-blown, and will clearly be spending a good few more nights out with this monster of a telescope! More pictures will inevitably follow!

Back to one of my very first targets last night - the beautiful Hercules Cluster, M13.

Several differences from the original attempt: first it was with a longer focal length scope and so a larger image. Secondly, there were a few more exposures, although still not nearly enough to make me happy. Only about 15 passed muster upon inspection, and I'd like at least four times that many.

However, the detail is definitely better. One thing that really rankles though - eggy stars again! Really need to get on with this autoguiding malarkey (where a smaller scope guides the main imaging scope in order to allow longer exposures and prevent star trailing - eggs to you and me!) as I'm getting bored of saying the images are 'OK' or 'alright'. Would really like to get it down so that I can start posting something really good!

 Anyway -  M13 - strike two:

M13: The Great Globular Cluster in Hercules

M13: The Great Globular Cluster in Hercules
Comprised of around 300,000 stars, M13 (a.k.a. NGC 6205) lies over 20,000 light years away and orbits the Milky Way as a tiny companion; a collection of stars too small to be a galaxy, but yet still very large and extremely old. Many such clusters orbit our galaxy and as such have been instrumental in increasing our understanding of stellar and galactic evolution. This image, composed with the invaluable help of my cousin Jamie, was comprised of 15 of the best frames from 30 of 60 seconds each at ISO 800. The frames were stacked and the curves, luminance and saturation tweaked in Deep Sky Stacker.

Also in the same night we had a stab at a serendipitous find, the Sunflower Galaxy, M63, although we could definitely have done with longer exposures and more of them. Nevertheless, we have something, and it's an easy enough target so we'll definitely be going back to it, hopefully over the next few days, if the BBC Weather website is to be believed!

 

Whilst there's not a lot to see here, a little detail can just be made out. One problem with both of last night's images is that they were unwittingly shot in JPEG format rather than RAW, which means that DSS cannot correctly calibrate the images before stacking. What effect this ultimately has I'm unsure, but I'm certain RAW files would have produced a nicer result. Must remember to change back after doing terrestrial photography!
Anyway, this last image was comprised of 30 frames, each of 60 seconds at ISO 800. Once again stacked and tweaked in DSS, but this time it was taken with a Canon EOS 450D which I have kindly been lent in order to evaluate the camera as a potential upgrade. I must say that being able to connect to the laptop and focus using APT, as well as being able to specify a capturing scheme in this excellent program, has essentially convinced me that moving up to either the 450D or the 1100D is an essential move.