I took this last autumn at the Kielder star party. I always felt I could get a little more from it and today I finally got round to having another crack at it! I reduced the stars, did some more noise reduction and generally tidied it up a bit.
I think this is one of my favourite objects in the night sky, I think I might revisit it with the 70mm widefield setup next star party and see just how much dust I can pick up…..
I think this will be the last image of the season, I really wanted to get something just to prove the EQ6 was working…… I only got 5 x 5min subs before the clouds rolled in but still I’m happy with it (Other than the not perfect stars due to tube currents). I used Pixinsights HDRWavelets tool to really bring out the stars in the core of the globular.
M13, is the largest globular cluster in the northern hemisphere and really is a wonderful object both visually and for imaging. It’s in the constellation of Hercules and is about 150 light years in diameter and is composed of several hundred thousand stars – image the view from a planet in M13!!!!
I got the Observatory re-plasterboarded as the job I did originally left a little to be desired……. I thought I would post up a couple of piccies of it and the kit as I think the only Obsy pictures were when it was getting built!
I also managed to get hold of an EQ6 Pro for a cracking price so that is now permanently mounted and the HEQ5 Pro I used to have is now a grab ‘n go mount – I can finally leave everything setup and go to some of the local meets that scottishastronomers.com have from time to time 
Somebody on Scottish Astronomers pointed out that this may be a thrid Asteroid but I can ide
ntify it!
I finally got round to making an animation to show the couple of Asteroids I caught in my Makarians Chain image. Cant really find out any information about them other than the names! (1078) Mentha and (742) Edisona.
A few of us from the ScottishAstronomers group hired a house in the Scottish Borders for the weekend, unusually for us we had a clear night! I have been wanting to get a bit of a closer view of Makarians Chain for a couple of years, the last attempt was with a William Optics ZS66 and the galaxies (although numerous) were just too small for my liking. This time I got the F4 Newt on the job and with it’s focal length of 800mm got a bit ‘further in’ so to speak!
Makarians Chain of galaxies, is a ‘chain’ of galaxies that forms part of the Virgo Cluster, at least 7 of the galaxies are moving coherently but there are a lot more than tha in this image! M84 and M86 are the 2 large galaxies in the centre.
I also caught 2 Minor Planets that can be seen to move across the frame but in the image below they are removed due to the stacking method involved – I will get a little animation of them up here shortly – once I have caught up with my sleep!
This is as far back as I can recall images from the forum, it’s the Flame and Horsehead nebula taken with a Meade DSI (Which got relegated to guiding duties when I got hold of a Canon 350d). I was very chuffed with this:
Here is what I said about it on the 8th of January 2008′I think I may have got all I can from this image. More exposures needed! Still, I am very pleased I did manage to capture it at all.’
This is Orion from 2009, what I like is the title of it in the forum image gallery -
I copied these over from an old forum I used to frequent, they were taken as I was just getting this hobby.
Comet Holmes visited us in 2007 and was a most unusual comet, the image below is prettymuch what it looked like through a pair of bino’s! Check the Wiki for more info…. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet_Holmes
This is the Lunar eclipse from 2009, the details show it was taken with a 200mm camera lens and a Philips ToUCam webcam. I think this setup was only used once or twice, the 200mm lens had masses of coma but due to the small field of view with the tiny webcam chip it was perfect for imaging this eclipse. I remember my neighbour popping over and us standing in the garden about midnight with a beer watching this!!
I re-shot the Ha data as the previous version was pushed way to far (A constant danger with Pixinsight!) and added it to the RGB I shot a few days ago. I am a lot happier with it now, I deliberatly underprocessed it to get a softer and more natural look to it.
