BBC Sky at Night Magazine Deep Sky Tour

A change from my usual way of doing things. Tonight I followed the March 2019 edition of the Sky at Night Magazine Deep Sky tour, in Canes Venatici and Coma Berenices. I looked at the following object by taking a 120 s  exposure, no stacking. Having found the most interesting looking one, I then took 240s exposures (around 2 hours worth) and processed that in the usual way.

NGC 4565 The Needle Galaxy

NGC 4559

NGC 4274

NGC 4656 The Hockey Stick or Crow bar Galaxy and NGC 4631 The Whale

NGC 4244

The next is 240s x 24 :

NGC 4274 and friends

Via Astrometry.net, this can be solved as follows:

Leo Triplet

This is the first image taken with the Skywatcher ED80 in a while. Had a few problems getting the  Celestron CG5 GT mount to track anything like accurately, so that I could use guiding. The problem seems to be the cabling was too tight, the mount wasn't  'East heavy' (so the gears are in constant mesh) and maybe other things since  the tracking is still not as good as other people get. I need to save the pennies and get a NEQ 6 Pro I think!

Anyway, this pic is based on 170 x 60s lights, and the usual flats, darks and bias. I think the gradient is caused by some ambient lighting (I have a red light on in the 'shed' (= Observatory!). Mental note to self - turn it off!

Triplet of Galaxies in Leo

The Leo Triplet (also known as the M66 Group) is a small group of galaxies about 35 million light-years away in the constellation Leo. This galaxy group consists of the spiral galaxies M65, M66, and NGC 3628.

While I was waiting for the Triplet to cross the meridian, I also took a few exposures of the Whirlpool Galaxy:

Whirlpool Galaxy 

The Whirlpool Galaxy, also known as Messier 51a, M51a, and NGC 5194, is an interacting grand-design spiral galaxy with a Seyfert 2 active galactic nucleus. It lies in the constellation Canes Venatici, and was the first galaxy to be classified as a spiral galaxy. Its distance is estimated to be between 15 and 35 million light-years.

Celestron XLT 6 as imaging telescope

Owing to changes at home, it was going to be really difficult to get the tripod plus ED80 outside easily and safely, so I thought that I would get myself a smaller more portable telescope. I came across a Celestron XLT 6, which seemed to fit the bill. I  have spent a few very interesting nights just observing, anything and everything from asterisms to double stars, nebulae etc. The Celestron is a beautiful piece of optical machinery! My only complaint has been that it is not a 11 or 14 inch! When I compared it with the ED80, even thought the ED80 is acknowledged to be a great telescope for a beginner to do wide field deep sky astrophotography, it is definitely lacking in resolution compared with the Celestron.  Last night, I tried taking some images with the Celestron, which was made more difficult by having  to set up the finder, camera and then find out how to focus it accurately (software was being difficult!). Anyway, in the end I managed to get 3 useable 30 second frames and the photo below shows the result. Compare this with the one If did last year using the ED80. Some way to go I think !!

Orion Nebula seen via Celestron  XLT 6 (but only 3  30s frames, no calibration frames at all)

Orion Nebula via a Skywatcher ED80 (45 x 45s with calibration frames)

Even though the image is rubbish, it does hold some promise for what I might get with a good series of frames , plus a full set of calibration frames. The field of view is narrower and the resolution higher.

Still in Cygnus

Tonight, the target was the Pelican Nebula, just next to the North American Nebula.

Pelican Nebula IC 5070 in Cygnus

Overstretched somewhat and garish, but it does show why its called the Pelican!

September and the North American Nebula

The summer was very busy (New Zealand and Spain, relaying all the decking), so, with that and the lack of astronomical light, there was no astrophotography in June, July and August.

So, with Cygnus practically overhead, I had a look at the North American Nebula. My brother in law Chris was over from New Zealand and had a irt look at astrophotography on the 'small scale'.

North American Nebula in Cygnus

We also had a look at the moon.

The Moon

I showed him the Great Globular Cluster in Hercules, Whirlpool galaxy in Ursa Major, Double Cluster in Perseus, but no photos worth showing were taken.

The Great Globular Cluster and a rather fuzzy Sunflower

The Great Globular Cluster in Hercules:

The images of M63 The Sunflower Galaxy was based on 90 minutes of data but for some reasons the image was very fuzzy. Some of the frames were rotated though 90 degrees so I guess the camera is doing it. I shall make  sure I turn off autorotation !

Three galaxies and a globular cluster

Here are images of the Leo Triplet (M64, M65 and NGC 3628. This is based on around 1 hour 20 mins of data, taken with a Canon 500D on a Skywatcher ED80 (my currrent setup). It was a breeze to get everything set up and calibrated and the tracking was pretty spot on until the clouds rolled in around midnight.

Leo Triplet of galaxies

Earlier, while I was waiting for full darkness, I had a quick look (about 30 mins of exposures) at M3 globular cluster in Canes Venatici:

M3 Globular Cluster in Canes Venatici