The Suffolk Sky » M82

M81 and M82 on March 20, 2010

Hersey — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 18:41:07 +0000

Pretty nice night. Pretty clear, a few high thin clouds passing every once in a while, and the air was fairly still. The temperature was around 60 the whole time I was out. The seeing is generally much better when it is cool and crisp outside, but it sure was nice to be out with out having to wear ten layers.

Here is an image of M81 (in the center) and M82 (to the left) I took last night.

This image is a stack of 18 2 minute exposures at ISO800 with my Nikon D60 through my AstroTech 66ED.

The polar alignment routine on the Celestron GOTO is pretty slick. I do a manual rough polar alignment using the polar alignment scope in the mount, then I do the two star alignment with a calibration start, then use the polar alignment on the hand controller to get it dialed in, then reset to the indexes and do another 2 star align – even though this process takes a bit of time, you do end up with a pretty good polar alignment.

I took the time to get a good polar alignment, but did not feel like setting up the laptop and everything for the guide camera. I was not going to do any imaging at all, but since I did have a a pretty good alignment and it was clear, I decided to go ahead and attach the camera to the 66 and take some shots while I observed visually through the C8. The alignment was good enough that out of the 20 2 minute exposures I took, 18 of them were good enough to stack. Next time I will set up the autoguider and try for longer exposures.

I also took a few exposures of M66 and M65, but I have not finished stacking and processing them yet. I will probably post them in a few days.

M81, M82, Saturn and Something ??? – 04/26/09

Hersey — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 11:33:53 +0000

Pretty warm out but the sky was very clear. First time in several weeks that time and the weather allowed for some stargazing. Also the first time I have been out this year where I did not need a jacket. Biggest problem with the warmer weather is the bugs and there were plenty of them out. I still had a great time observing.

I was able to observe M81, M82, Sombrero Galaxy (M104), Whirlpool Galaxy (M51), Ghost of Jupiter, and Saturn.

Here are a couple of piggy back shots I took.

M81 and M82 - Piggyback 100mm 2 Minute

Below is a piggy back picture of Saturn using the 100mm Sigma on my Nikon D60. Anyone have any idea what that green fuzzy up and to the left of Saturn is?

Saturn and ??? - Piggyback 100mm 2 Minutes

I checked Stellarium and looked around the ‘net but I have not been able to identify what this object is. Please leave a comment if you can identify it. Thanks.

Suppose to be clear again tonight so I hope to get some prime focus shots of M51, M104, M81, M82, and maybe the Ghost of Jupiter.

M82 on 2/13/09

Hersey — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 14:10:50 +0000

Friday night Mary Shannon and I spent a few hours looking at the stars. We checked out the Orion nebula, several open clusters that were pretty easy to find, and Saturn. She got a kick out of the things that we could see. I was actually pretty surprised that it held her attention for the several hours we were out in the cold.

After a bit of looking around, we focused our attention on M81 and M82. I wanted take some images to see what kind of difference the focal reducer (Celestron f/6.3 Reducer Corrector for C Series Telescopes) that I just got would make when taking prime focus pictures. It makes a lot. We took about 20 1min ISO 800 exposures of M82 and 5 1min dark frames. When I processed the images using Deep Sky Stacker it would only stack 7 of the images.

The result is the most detailed image that I have taken of any deep sky object. Check it out.

M82 - 7x1min - ISO 800 - 5 Dark Frames

We were going to go out and look again lastnight, but some high clouds started to roll in. Hopefully there will be clear skys tonight.