Tag

ticker

Browsing

M33 – The Triangulum Galaxy This is about two hours each of LRGB (in each filter) with the Takahashi FSQ85 telescope and Atik 460 CCD camera with Baader LRGB filters.  I did not use a Ha filter on this image.  The data was collected on 29th November 2013 and it was the second light of the telescope (first light being The Double Cluster here).  The telescope performs superbly and is very well colour balanced.At a distance of about 2.8 – 3.0  million light years, M33 is the most distant object that can be viewed by the unaided eye and is visible in a dark sky setting as a very tenuous patch of light.  Being a face-on galaxy, it has rather low surface brightness and it lacks a bright central core making it quite hard for beginners to find as they expect to see something much brighter and more colourful.  The…

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…