SK Astro
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FSQ85

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Open Clusters

M44 – Praesepe – with FSQ85

Praesepe

M44 or “Praesepe” as it is called, is a famous open cluster visible in the late winter/ springtime in the constellation of Cancer – The Crab. It is often nicknamed The Beehive cluster since it resembles a swarm of bees when viewed in a wide-field telescope or binoculars. Along with M45 it is one of the most immediately breathtaking sights in the deep sky. At about 510 light years it is one of the closer Open Cluster to the Earth and is about 12 light years across and contains about 1000 stars. Note the tiny, distant galaxy in the bottom of the cluster PGC24400. M44 (“Praesepe”), The Beehive Cluster Image Technical Data Imaged over two evenings, the 22 and 23 February 2019 from my backyard in Nottingham, UK. Conditions were far from ideal with a high, hazy mist that made transparency poor and subsequent processing difficult. Captured with Takahashi FSQ85…

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Galaxies

M96 Group in Leo – FSQ85

The M96 Group is a cluster of galaxies in the constellation of Leo.  Not to be confused with the separate and arguably more famous Leo triplet.  The M96 group contains three Messier galaxies (M95, M96 and M105) and many fainter galaxies in the background.  The three main galaxies are about 35 million light years away and are easily visible in small telescopes.  M96 Group Image Technical Data Technical Information Imaged from my backyard, March 2019, in Nottingham, UK.  I used my FSQ85 refractor with 0.73 reducer and my Moravian instruments G2-8300 CCD camera and Astrodon LRGB filters.  Mount is my MESU200 and guided with an Off-Axis guider. Image acquisition data:Luminance 11 x 600s 1×1; Red 9 x 300s 2×2; Green 10 x 300s 2×2;  Blue 10 x 300s 2×2 M96 Group Annotated

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Open Clusters

The Double Cluster

The Double Cluster

The Double Cluster in Perseus The Double Cluster is located in the constellation of Perseus, near the border with Cassiopeia and is composed of the two Open Clusters NGC869 and NGC 884. They are visible faintly to the naked eye on a dark night and a wide field eye piece shows them superbly in the telescope as does a pair of binoculars if you hold them steady. The clusters are very distant from us at about 7500 light years and are located outwards in the Perseus spiral arm of the galaxy. Were they as close as The Pleiades (at 450 light years) they would dominate the night sky! The above image was taken with my Takahashi FSQ85 refractor and Atik 460 CCD camera with Baader RGB filters and contains 45 minutes of exposures in each of the RGB channels. I took these exposures in 2013 and this was the first…

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Galaxies

Markarian’s Chain

A famous string of galaxies in the constellation of Virgo, named after the astronomer Benjamin Markarian who first discovered their common motion.  The chain contains several Messier catalogue objects and is visible in the late winter and spring in the Northern Hemisphere.  The galaxies are located between 65-75 million light years away and are nice objects to observe with a telescope if you can do so from a dark sight.This image was created from a data set acquired in Spring 2019 with my FSQ85 refractor.Image is centred on “The Eyes” of NGC4435 and NGC4438 just below dead centre of the image.  At the bottom is the monstrous supergiant elliptical galaxy M87, the most massive object in the local universe harbouring the famous black hole recently imaged with the event horizon telescope. Markarian’s Chain in Virgo  Below is an inverted version that help show the galaxies with more contrast. Inverted Version…

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Nebulae

The North American and Pelican Nebulae in Hydrogen Alpha

North American Nebula

The North American Nebula and the adjacent Pelican nebula to the right of it are popular objects of the summer and autumn sky in the Northern Hemisphere.  Both of these objects are aptly named because the nebula to the left really does look like the continent of North America being looked at by a pelican to the right!This post discusses a version of these objects in the light of Hydrogen Alpha 3nm only.  You can see the vast amount of detail that is emitted at this wavelength by the clouds of hydrogen that the nebulae are composed from.This picture is composed of 48 x 600s exposures with a Takahashi FSQ85 refractor and Moravian G2-8300 CCD camera with an Astrodon 31mm 3nm Ha filter and the Takahashi 0.73 reducer.  The image discussed here is a pure Ha monochrome image but I also combined this data set with RGB colour data as…

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