Stephen Kirk, Author at SK Astro

Nebulae 16 January 2024

IC1396 Nebulae In A wide Field

IC1396 is a fabulous and well known nebula complex in the Far Northern constellation of Cepheus and is about 2400 light years distant. It is comprised of a huge cloud of excited hydrogen gas known as a HII region (pronounced H-two). Some nice features include the Elephant’s Trunk nebula embedded in it.Full resolution (8Meg) image here (opens in a new tab): https://skastro.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/IC_1396_WF.jpg IC1396 Nebula in Cepheus Technical Details Imaged from my back yard in Nottingham, UK on the nights of 15 and 16th October 2023 when almost directly overhead. It consist of 54 x 240s exposures with a QHYCCD One Shot Colour (OSC) camera with a gain of 30 and offset of 0 through a Takahashi FSQ85 telescope with the 0.67 focal reducer/flattener.Sky conditions and transparency were both poor, as usual for the UK in all but the rarest nights of seeing.I hope you like it 🙂 IC1396 Annotated Finder Chart…

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Galaxies 9 December 2023

NGC 2903 Spiral Galaxy

A magnificent spiral galaxy with TEC 140 and Atik 460 Many astronomers consider NGC 2903 the best and brightest galaxy that isn’t included in the famous Messier list and are surprised Messier himself didn’t include it in his catalogue. It is very photogenic and brighter than several other galaxies that are included in Messier’s list such as M65 and M66. It is located in Leo to the right of the “sickle” of Leo and is about 30 million light years distant. Full resolution image here (opens in a new tab). If you open the full resolution image you will see many tiny, remote galaxies in the depths of the Universe. Technical Detail Imaged with my TEC140 telescope and Atik 460 CCD camera with Astrodon E series LRGB filters on the 25th and 26th March 2022. The data set is as follows with the luminance binned 1×1 and the RGB at…

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Constellations Wide Field 8 December 2023

Southern Orion in a Wide Field View

An image of Orion from January 2023 taken with a QHY268C cooled astronomy camera mated with a Samyang 135mm lens to give a very wide field view. Orion In A Wide Field with QHY268C and a Samyang 135mm DLSR lens Full sized image here (opens in a new tab).The image is composed of 56 x 120s exposures at F2.8. I used my wide field rig with autofocus to get the stars and nebulosity sharp and tight. I captured flats, darks and dark-flats. Mounted on NEQ6 with a guider scope and image data captured with NINA. All pre and post development is done in PixInsight.Captured over two nights 20th and 23rd January 2023 when Orion was high to the south. From my back yard in Saxondale, Nottinghamshire – suburban, Bortle 4-5.I have also captured the Constellation of Orion here. Annotated Version Finder Chart

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Asterisms Wide Field 8 December 2023

Collinder 399 “The Coathanger” Samyang 135mm

Collinder 399 or Brocchi’s Cluster is offered nicknamed “The Coathanger” for its striking resemblance to that wardrobe item! If you look at the stars in the middle of the image and it looks very much like a coathanger on its side. It is located within the constellation of Vulpecula – The Fox – within a larger asterism called The Summer Triangle. The Coathanger is a chance, line-of-sight effect and the stars that form the appearance of the coathanger are not physically associated with each other at all and range from 350 to 2300 light years in distance. The stars are backdropped against the vast clouds of glowing hydrogen that dominate the spiral arms of the Milky Way galaxy. The Coathanger in Vulpecula Image Technical Data Uncompressed version of the image is here (opens in new tab).Image captured in my backyard in Nottingham, UK on Sunday 20th September 2020. I used…

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Galaxies 7 December 2023

M74 Galaxy with TEC 140 and Atik 460

M74 is a magnificent spiral galaxy about 32 million light years away in the constellation of Pisces. It has quite low surface brightness which makes it quite a hard galaxy to observe. It bears a passing resemblance to M101 I always think, but is much dimmer. M74 Galaxy in Pisces Imaged on 15th December 2022 when to The South. I used my TEC 140 refractor with its field flattener, an Atik 460 CCD camera with Astrodon E series 1.25″ LRGB filters. All on my MESU 200 mount which was off-axis guided. The objective lens was very dirty and I cleaned it the following day. Despite that, the image came out quite nice.This image is made from quite a modest data set comprising the followingLUM > 12 x 300s ; Red > 9 x 300s ; Green 9 x 300s ; Blue > 9 x 300s Which gives a total integration (exposure)…

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