Globular clusters Open clusters Nebula doubles, variables, comets, spaceships, etc
01-18-04 about 2:30am
M 94 (NGC 4736), spiral galaxy in Canes Venatici, between 14.5 and 33 million light years from earth. Visual magnitude 8.2, surface brightness 13.1, 12.3 x 10.8 arc minutes. 40 second exposures, only about 20 stacked. Used Orion's Skyglow filter Baader UV/IR cut filter and f/6.3 r/c.
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01-04-04 about 5:00am
M 104 (NGC 4594), the Sombrero Galaxy in Virgo, about 50 million light years from earth. Visual magnitude 8.0, surface brightness 11.6, 8.6 x 4.2 arc minutes. 30 second exposures, only about 15 stacked. Used Orion's Skyglow filter and f/6.3 r/c. Sun was coming up as I was still photographing.
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12-19-03
M51, (NGC5194 & NGC5195), the Whirlpool galaxy a spiral galaxy in constellation Canes Venatici, about 37 million light years from earth. Visual magnitude 8.4, 11 x 7 arcminutes. 15 second exposures, 100 taken. I spent hours trying to find this using a 'push to' system. Only minutes with 'goto'.
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M77 (NGC1068), a barred spiral galaxy in constellation Cetus, about 50 million light years from earth. Visual magnitude 8.9. 7 x 6 arcminutes. 99 out of 100 frames stacked. 15 seconds each at f/3.3. Dark subtracted (sorta) . Histogram stretched a bit. Nothing else. From light polluted Las Vegas.
99 frames out of 100 at 15 seconds each. This is with my new EQ-6. With my old CG-5, I used 18 out of 40 one second frames. 99% at 15 seconds vs. 45% at 1 second. Hmmm.
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9-23-03
NGC253, a spiral galaxy in constellation Sculptor, about 10 million light years from earth. Visual magnitude 7.1, 25 x 7 arc minutes. Dark frame subtracted, levels adjusted in Photoshop.
M33, the Pinwheel galaxy in Triangulum. 3 million light years from earth. Visual magnitude 5.7, 73 x 45 arcminutes. My first galaxy captured. 20 second exposure, 15 frames stacked, f/3.3, dark frame subtracted
M33, no processing other than stacking, then copying then pasting on top of itself, then moved 1 pixel off to eliminate missing line.
Above pic with auto level and auto contrast in Photoshop.
Used Imerge to manually stack a lot of fit files. Histogram adjust and blur in Photoshop
This is a composite of various exposures. Levels tweaked to try to show pinwheel.
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