SK Astro
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FSQ85

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Galaxies Uncategorized

Close Up Study of The Great Andromeda Galaxy M31 with TEC140 and FSQ85

M81_West

M31 is one of the most favoured and popular imaging targets in the night sky; it is bright, large and very photogenic.  I have imaged this galaxy numerous times, for example, in this LRGB version and in this OSC version.   Since the galaxy is so large, each of these images is set in a wide field, one of 3 degrees horizontally and 2 degrees vertically across the field of view which equates to six times the diameter of the full moon. Many newcomers do not appreciate how large these objects are in the sky.  Large but VERY dim! M31 in OSC from a QHY268C and Takahashi FSQ85 refractor The above image is at a resolution of 4.16arcsec/pixel.  On such a large object as M31 this allows the entire galaxy to be imaged in one field of view on a wide field refractor such as the FSQ85 but does not allow…

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Nebulae Uncategorized

A Set of Images of NGC7000, The North American Nebula. Is Ha data worth it?

RGB_with_48x600s_Ha

HaRGB A perennial favourite object to image in the summer and autumn months in the Northern Hemisphere.  I’ve imaged this target with multiple equipment combinations over the years.  For example, in One Shot Colour (OSC), in widefield and in a very wide field.As part of the image I used my existing Ha dataset from 2018/2019 which consists of 48 x 600 second exposures.  I discuss capture of this image here. 48 x 600s Ha Image I then captured the RGB dataset in October 2021.  This image is my first image set that I captured using the excellent NINA (Nighttime Imaging “N” Astronomy) imaging software.  I captured four hours of RGB data through Astrodon 31mm E series Gen 2 filters binned at 1×1.  This consisted of 300 second exposures.  Seeing and transparency were not good but clear nights have been very infrequent in the UK in the past six months so I…

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Open Clusters

M45 – The Pleiades

Easily visible with the naked eye, M45, The Pleiades – sometimes referred to as The Seven Sisters, is a well known and famous Open Cluster in the constellation of Taurus.  IT has been known since ancient times due to its prominence.  The cluster is located between 450-500 light years away and contains several hundreds member stars.  The cluster is quite young by astronomy standards and the cluster is moving through a cloud of gas which is easily visible in images and can been seen visually in a dark sky as well. M45 – THe Pleiades Technical Details Imaged from my backyard in Nottingham on Saturday 9th January 2021 when high to The South.  A meridian flip occurred half way through the data acquisition.  I used my Takahashi FSQ85 refractor and QHY268C One Shot Colour camera.  The image was created with quite a small data set of only 38 x 180s…

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Lunar

The Moon, 24 Dec 2020, FSQ85 and QHY268C

Moon 24 Dec 2020 FSQ85 and QHY268C

This is a one shot colour picture of The Moon through my Takahashi FSQ85 telescope and my QHY268C colour camera.  Seeing between bouts of cloud dodging was quite good with very little in the way of shimmering. This is the best 40% of 5000 frames captured with Fire Capture.  I did not use the full resolution of the QHY268’s 6000×4000 sensor, I just captured the central 1600×1200.  Unusual to see the FSQ85 used as a planetary or lunar scope but it does excel at this as well as deep sky astrophotography work.  It is also a very good instrument for visual observations.Processed with Autostakkert, PixInsight and Photoshop.  I hope you like it.  It could do with a bit more colour to bring out the colour in the Mare (sea) regions. The Moon 24 Dec 2020 with FSQ85 and QHY268C

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Lunar

The Moon

The Moon was at about first quarter when I captured this image.  There are a lot of firsts in this image when capturing as I discuss below. Moon, 22 Dec 2020 First up, this is the first time I used the QHY268C for planetary photography in video mode.  Before now, I always used this camera in long exposure mode.  I think the camera works very well and when I cropped the capture area down to 1600×1200 from its native 6000×4000, I was capturing16fps in Sharpcap, which is quite reasonable.Secondly, this is the first time I used my Takahashi FSQ85 as a planetary/lunar scope.    I think it worked our pretty well.  I would normally have moved the camera over to the TEC140 or even the C925 SCT scope, however, I do not yuet have the adapters for the QHY268C to do that just yet. Technical Details As mentioned, imaged with…

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