May 2011

Little Dipper

Posted: May 12th, 2011

I started this project in January, from the Pinar de Araceil in Spain, during two incredibly freezing nights, imaging only between 4:30 and 6am. After that, I captured more data very slowly, as I only wanted to capture data when the bowl of the constellation was high in the sky, and that could only be at the time all you want to do is pack and go home.

Finally, during several nights in April I was able to finish all frames that included the actual asterism, and in 4 more nights in May (all at the DARC Observatory), I completed the areas above and below it, to become the 20 frames (4x5) mosaic that you can now see.

The image at first doesn't seem to impact very much. It is after all mainly dominated by stars and some faint galactic cirrus in the background. Still, I had this project in mind for many months, as I really wanted to see this "small" constellation at a better resolution and depth than what I had been able to see before, and I was just patiently waiting for the right time to capture it.

Down here you can see the image with asterism and star names:

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One star, many stars (M13)

Posted: May 4th, 2011

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I spent the nights from April 28 to May 1st at DARC, again :-)

Besides finishing my Little Dipper mosaic and a few other things, at some point late during the last session but still with some night time left, I decided to go for an unusual framing of M13. Unfortunately, after three wonderful nights, that night, the end of this night wasn't so good, and in fact I ended up throwing away all the shots.

Therefore, on May 3rd, I went up to Henry Coe State Park (one of the parks that is scheduled to close in September 2011, sadly) to at least get some color data.

And after that, the next day, on Wednesday (May 4th) I got some courage and went back to DARC, this time capturing about 20x10 minutes of luminance and a bit more RGB. In the end I only used the RGBs from DARC because the ones from Coe seemed a tad out of focus.

Now, about the image I am presenting here, the star in the lower left is Eta Herculis, and the globular cluster is, of course, M13.. The background variations are exaggerated, but they're not artifacts. Still, there's a round dark patch to the right of M13 that, although I haven't investigated it, it looks like it might be a badly deflated dust mote.

People who are familiar with this object and astrophotography would say that the FSQ is not the right telescope to use for this object, M13. Well, yes, they are right. However, I think I managed to capture an interesting image that isn't just centered on the famous globular cluster, and provide a unique view, if not of this object, at least of the area in the sky where it sits.

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The Volcano Nebula (IFN, M81 and M82)

Posted: May 4th, 2011

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This image covers a "small" area of the mosaic I did in 2010, but in this case, spending more hours on this particular area, and preserving its original resolution.

The field of view shows part of the area of IFN that Steve Mandel named The Volcano Nebula near the famous M81 and M82 galaxies.

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Coma Berenices

Posted: May 2nd, 2011

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Here's an image of Coma Berenices, also known as Melotte 111.

It was after seeing this image that I decided to get a new set of filters to avoid the huge halos around the bright stars - which I did just a few weeks later.

Also, there's a few strange things in this image. Most stars seem to have a rather pronounced color ring, and the brightest stars look quite blurred. One could think this blurry effect was an effect of the post-processing, but it's not.

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