This wonderful selection of images was taken with a Meade LX200, F10 with an ST6 CCD Camera Our images were taken on May 19, 1999.
Albireo
This is a 2 second image taken using a clear filter.
This is a RGB stacked image taken at 2s, 3s, and 6s, respectively.
M 104: The Sombrero Galaxy
This is a 15s image using a clear filter.
This a 30s image using a clear filter. Notice that the arms are more distinctive with a longer exposure.
This a 45s image yet again using a clear filter. This exposure is long enough to show the dust lane on the edge of the galaxy.
This image is composed of 3 45s stacked images.
The “Mustard” Sombrero Galaxy. This image is comprised of 45s, 67s, 3x45s RGB photos stacked in Photoshop. You can see the dust lane in the mustard image here, too. 🙂
M51:
~~~~Whirlpool Galaxy~~~~
45 second clear filter image.
55 second clear filter image.
65 second clear filter image of Whirlpool Galaxy and distorting companion.
75 second clear filter image. Notice the ever more prominent arms, whirlpooling about.
80 second clear filter image. We probably got some trailing here, but who would notice it with these lovely arms?
M58: Spiral Galaxy in Virgo
Isn’t it cute? It’s so tiny. Anyway, this is a 45 second exposure, clear filter as always.
Still tiny. 50 second exposure, clear filter.
Wow! Now you can see that small, diffuse nucleus. 60 second exposure, clear filter.
Not much better. 70 second exposure, clear filter.
M61: Virgo Cluster Spiral Galaxy
50 second exposure, clear filter. The clouds were approaching when we took this, so we were unable to show the knotted arms with longer exposure times.
M63: Sunflower Galaxy
50 second exposure, clear filter. It’s tiny but you can see the, no wait, you can’t. It’s a spiral galaxy even if it looks like a fuzzy blob here. But you can see the sunflower resemblance.
M64: Black Eye Galaxy
45 seconds, clear filter. Can’t see anything, can you?
Ooooooooh. Now you can see the LARGE dust lane and the black eye effect. 50 seconds, clear filter.
Ooooooh. Purdy. And Prominent dust lane. 3, 50 second exposures, clear filter, stacked.
Mars
Yup, that’s right, The War God’s namesake.
.02 seconds, like, duh, we only did clear filters, so it doesn’t appear red here.
Same thing, only .01 seconds this time. Only slightly better, we know. But it’s the best we can do with our limited resources.
This photo courtesy of: http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov
BLOOPERS!
Our first attempt at focusing gave us this lovely modern art version of Arcturas.
Ahhh. Much better. This is Arcturas, in focus, saturating our camera at that magical 65535 number. This is as clear as she gets with Arcturas and our equipment.
Can YOU find M104 ?
This is what happens when you forget to subtract the dark frame. This is supposed to be the lovely Mustard Sombrero galaxy.
Okay, can you guess what this is?
No? Neither could we. We were aiming for M27, the Dumbell Nebula. Those wonderful clouds, an astronomer’s nightmare, arrived on the tail end of this picture or we were just cold and tired and had just ordered pizza. You decide. We can’t remember. Either way, it is a lovely field of stars, isn’t it? 🙂
This is what it should look like:
This wonderful selection of images was taken with a Meade LX200, F10 with an ST6 CCD Camera
Our images were taken on May 19, 1999.
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This page was created by Shaunna L. Barnhart and Sarah Kathryn Covin.
June 3, 1999