My first image of the Milkyway

So with my new Canon 700D & 14mm Samyang Lens I decided to try and see if I could pick up the milky way from my heavily light polluted back garden.

I will be honest and say my initial images were horrid, they were basically yellow! However, I took 10 x 30 Second ISO 3200 subs and used DeepSkyStacker, Photoshop & PixInsight to actually pull out an okay image with the Milky Way actually reasonably visible.

I am looking forward to taking the camera out to some actual dark sites as well as plugging it into my telescope but for now I am happy with what I have managed so far!

Christmas Bonanza!

So Santa went nuts for Christmas this year and provided me with lots of new bits and pieces for my Astronomy adventure so I thought I would share my new equipment with the world.

First up is something I have been in great need of which is some nice warm Quechua snow boots. There has been several times that I have been outside for only two hours and realised I can no longer feel my toes! I either cut my evening short or I end up suffering with rather sore feet as the feeling comes back to them whilst I drive home. Santa was pretty cheap with these boots to be honest as they only cost £10 and the basically look like welly boots. However, they have supposedly been tested down to -18C for someone is at rest so I am pretty confident they should do a much better job that my trainers have been doing.

Next up is my major present of the year which is a Canon EOS 700d. Finally I can stop borrowing my friends DSLR when I want to do some imaging and use my own. It comes with an 18-55mm STM lens which should be useful for basic things but I suspect this lens is more going to be used for daytime photography when I just want to take some quick pictures. To be honest, I am new to DSLR cameras so I think there will be a fair bit of learning to get through but I am looking forward to it.

I also recieved a prime lens which is the wonderful Samyang 14mm f/2.8 widefield lens which I hope to use for future milky way & constellation shots. I have read good reviews for this “budget” lens and whilst it is manual focus, this won’t really cause a problem for astrophotography shots as I can just set it to infinity focus.

My last camera related gift of Christmas is a tripod which means I can actually take some long exposure shots. One day I hope to get an EQ mount and fit the camera to that but for now a fixed tripod will at least enable to get some decent widefield shots. The tripod I received is a Red Snapper RST-283 & RSH-61 Ball Head which isn’t as expensive as some of the Manfrotto tripods but it seems to be well built and should be stable. The brief play around I have had with it has shown me that it may take me a while to get used to the movements of a ball head but it does offer a fair bit of flexibility in regards to moving the camera.

Santa didn’t forget my telescope either and my final gift of the year is a Skywatcher UHC filter. A few times recently I have contemplated that the views of various nebulas would potentially be enhanced by the use of an UHC filter. So now we shall see if I am right or not, I understand that dark skies are the best way to get better views but hopefully the UHC filter will still help the view from my back garden.

A Year of Astronomy

So it is now a year since my parents bought me a Skywatcher 127 MAK for Christmas in 2013 and I have thoroughly enjoyed the late nights and amazing views it has brought me. As it is a year I thought I would have a look back over my current observation stats and see how well I am doing against some of the standard target lists.

Messier : 23 out of 110
Herschel 400 : 13 out of 400
Planets : 5 out of 7
Caldwell : 7 out of 109
Lunar 100 : 9 out of 100

Overall not bad for the first year although I suspect I will never complete the Caldwell list and many of them aren't actually visible from Scotland.

I have started some exploration into Astrophotography as well and am quite happy with several of the images I have taken even though I don't have the best of set-ups yet. Anyway, my favourites from the year are shown below.

Jupiter with Callisto, Io & Ganymede

Caldwell 13 / NGC 457 / The Owl Cluster

An Iridium Flare

Constellation Orion

Double Stars & A Little Bit More

Anyone reading this blog will know that I am slowly discovering the various double stars in Ursa Minor and this post details the next three stars in my adventure, STF 1958, STF 2134 & STF 2299. However, the same night that I observed these stars I also decided to explore a few other night sky objects such as the Garnet Star, Foxhead Cluster (NGC 6819), Caldwell 1 & NGC 7160. The locations of all these targets are shown below.

STF 1958 (SAO 16749)
RA: 15 29 24.12 Dec: +67 12 16.0
Magnitudes: 9.63, 9.97
Separation: 29.7”
Position Angle: 338°

The first of the double stars of the night and to be honest it wasn't that impressive with me not actually noticing the secondary star until I used averted vision even with the decent separation. As my night vision improved I managed to look at it directly but to be honest both the stars just looked a dim white colour.

STF 2134 (HIP 83092 / SAO 8679)
RA: 16 58 44.10 Dec: +76 06 33.0
Magnitudes: 9.43, 10.22
Separation: 45.8”
Position Angle: 144°

As my night vision was better by now I could see both the primary and secondary straight off without needing any averted vision, this was of course helped by the decent amount of separation. As with the previous double, both stars appeared white although the difference in magnitudes made for a greater level of contrast between them.

STF 2299 (SAO 2933)
RA: 17 38 55.61 Dec: +84 02 42.9
Magnitudes: 9.46, 9.67
Separation: 33.5”
Position Angle: 124°

My final double of the night and another uninspiring target with both stars once again coming across as white and easily separated. I appear to be at the bottom of the barrel when it comes to interesting doubles in Ursa Minor but I will keep going until I think I have reached the limit of my current scope.

Garnet Star / Mu Cephei (HIP 107259 / SAO 33693)
RA: 21 43 30.46 Dec: +58 46 48.17
Magnitude: 4.08

The Garnet Star is a red supergiant in the Cepheus constellation and is one of the largest and most luminous stars known in the Milky Way. Its name comes from the fact that it Herschel noted it had a Garnet Red colouring. I have to admit it is a lovely sight to look at which a lovely red colour that clearly comes through. After looking at plenty of white coloured doubles this evening it was nice to see something showing a bit of colour. It reminded me a little bit of the star La Superba in Canes Venatici which also has a clear red colouring.

NGC 6819 / Foxhead Cluster
RA: 19 41 18 Dec: +40 11 00
Type: Open Cluster
Magnitude: 7.3

NGC 6819 is located around 7,200 light years away in the Cygnus constellation. It is called the Foxhead Cluster because the brighter star form a triangular shape which is supposedly like the head of fox.

I have to admit that I struggled to see much from my back garden and I could make out maybe 4-5 stars at most which was very disappointing. However, even with this limited number of stars I could see that there was a vague "V" shape to them which helped confirm I was in the right location. Another interesting thing I noted was that surrounding this small cluster was another set of brighter stars which also formed a triangular shape.

Caldwell 1
RA: 00 48 Dec: +85 15
Type: Open Cluster
Magnitude: 8.1

Caldwell 1, also know as NGC 188 is an open cluster in the Cepheus constellation about 5,000 light years away. Unlike most open clusters that drift apart after a few million years because of the gravitational interaction of our galaxy, NGC 188 lies far above the plane of the galaxy and is one of the most ancient of open clusters known, at approximately 5 billion years old.

The light pollution from Grangemouth Oil Refinery to the North of my home meant there was a fair change I wouldn't see anything but I could still make out a barely perceivable patch of light in the sky. For this cluster I really need to use a bigger aperture although I might be able to get more from a darker site as well. Either way, the most disappointing of the night but this probably should have been expected given a 5 Inch telescope was always going to be pushing it due to low surface brightness etc.

NGC 7160
RA: 21 53 40 Dec: +62 36 12
Type: Open Cluster
Magnitude: 6.1

NGC 7160 is located around 2,600 light years away in the Cepheus constellation. This was probably my favourite Open Cluster of the night because it was pretty clear to see with about 9 stars being visible. The shape itself was quite interesting to behold and to me it looked almost like a tadpole.

It was quite a compact cluster so I am not sure how much more I would be able to resolve at a darker site but I still suspect I will be back to it in the future as it was quite nice to see.

Some Widefield Imaging of Andromeda

For Christmas I am getting a DSLR so I can make an attempt at really getting involved in astrophotography. I decided to search Ebay for some cheap prime lenses  in preparation for getting my hands on the camera and I came across an old Olympus Zuiko 50mm f/1.8 Lens which was only going to cost me about £6. At that price I couldn't resist it even if I did also have to pay another £3 for a converter so I could fit it to Canon DSLRs.

After it arrived I quickly borrowed a friend's camera and put it to work on an easy target, namely the Andromeda Galaxy (Messier 31). I basically took 10 x 8 seconds subs at ISO 1600 and then used DeepSkyStacker to stack them before undertaking a fair amount of processing work in Pixinsight & Photoshop. There was a lot of processing required as the image showed a lot of coma as I had the lens set to wide open and therefore I had to crop out a large chunk of the image and then try to remove the coma that remained. In the future I will probably need to step down the lens to get a wider view although this will reduce the amount of light I am capturing, I suppose an EQ mount of some sort will need to be procured at some point to help me extend the sub length. Anyway, despite this I am actually quite happy with the image I took which I have attached below.

My favourite aspect of the image is that you can actually make out M110 & M32 as well although they are rather small!