456 replies to this topic

[Jeff Morgan]

Globular Cluster NGC 6553 in Sagittarius, nicely resolved in the 130mm aperture. Uranometria Deep Sky Guide lists the brightest members at magnitude 15.3.

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[Gavster]

I’m having some nice visual nv observing tonight despite the half moon. Here’s a phone shot of the horsehead taken through my c11 with 0.75x reducer and Televue 67mm eyepiece.

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[Jeff Morgan]

M 28 in Sagittarius. Bright with a very compact core.

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[Jeff Morgan]

Here is one you don't see every day. This image was lingering in my photo album, but with no notes. (My observing log goes through periods of rather poor discipline.)

 

From the date I knew what telescope I was using, and the observing site. Nothing else, not even the configuration. After some sleuthing I determined it is Sharpless 2-13 in Scorpius. If you are using SkySafari, it appears in the database as Gum 68. If you are old-school and using paper atlases, it is about 5-1/2 degrees from Shaula on a bearing of 350°.

 

Based on field width, this must have been shot afocally with the Tele Vue 67 Plossl.

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[Jeff Morgan]

M6 (aka the Butterfly Cluster) is one of the more popular open clusters. Yet in all the years I have been in the hobby, no one has ever mentioned the big nebula just next door: Sharpless 2-12.

 

Makes a nice combo, don't you think?

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[Eddgie]

Camping at Inks Lake State Park for a few days.  This was taken the first night.  SQM was 20.9 but due to severe dust in the central Texas region, transparency was a bit below what I was hoping. 

 

This was taken with the 10" Sky-Watcher Flextube working and the ASA redcuser working at about 875mm focal length and about f/3.44. 

 

This was just done with the phone in "Night Mode" so I did not choose the settings, the phone did.  I rarely try to control the settings.  I am just to lazy to do so.

To the eye, stars across the field are very sharp, so I think the aberrated bright stars at the edge of the field are probably just inherent in the phone camera. 

 

I don't really get that much in to taking pictures, but from time to time I do so I can share.  Actually, due to the image scale, this is better than the eyepiece view in the sense that I could see the Pillars of Creation in the eyepiece but the scale was a bit to small to see them clearly.  I did have my MPCC and could have run native focal length of 1200mm and probably got a better view, but I just did not feel like swapping it out for this one target.

 

Exposure was 1/2 second, ISO 1000, and f/1.5.  Filter was either 5nm or 6nm. I forget. 

 

[Eddgie]

And how about some stars....

 

M22 I think.

 

Galaxy S9 to Night Mode.  1/2 second, ISO 250, f/1.5 

 

 

Some very slight star trailing.  I don't know if I bumped the mount or the camera shifted slightly, or just that it is undrivien.

 

 

With the Flextube 10" set to the custom detent position, only a very small area of the field is fully illuminated, I would say maybe only about 1mm or 2mm circle at the center is 100%.   As can be seen though, the off axis illumination falloff is quite subtle. It shows much more in very long exposures (4 seconds or so, which as NV goes, is a pretty long exposure) but in visual use it is difficult to see, with the view appearing to be more or less as in this image.  I can see that there is a very slight falloff in the images but to the eye, it is very subtle.   Since the native scope is f/4.7, the illumination with the reducer over an 18mm circle is passable, but again, for longer exposures with very narrow filters it is much more pronounced.  I am not really much of an imager though, so that is OK with me. 

Edited by Eddgie, 15 October 2020 - 08:47 AM.

[Jeff Morgan]

Globular M22 with the 2.5x Powermate for scale.

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[Jeff Morgan]

Two views of M 11. One Prime, the other Prime + 2.5x Powermate.

 

By changing the camera ISO I can make them almost equally bright to the camera.

 

The eye does not work this way, but the barlowed NV views are still quite bright and detailed, not nearly as dim as conventional eyepieces.

 

So which magnifications do I use visually? All of them, just like when I use conventional eyepieces.

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[Jeff Morgan]

This was one of my first nights out with the Tele Vue 67 Converter lens. For all practical purposes, it converts the 55 Plossl to a 67 mm eyepiece. I suppose one can still call the resulting eyepiece a Plossl, so I do refer to it that way.

 

Whatever you call it, I have been very happy with the brighter image as well as the improved edge correction (vs. the stock 55 mm eyepiece).

 

Panning through Scorpius I found this nice pairing of emission (Sh 2-15) and dark (LDN 1795) nebula. There is a series of small dark nebula (LDN 1788) between them. Above the small patches of dark nebula is NGC 6451 (the Tom Thumb cluster), but it is rather tiny at this image scale. Lastly, open cluster NGC 6425 is visible slightly west of the emission nebula. It is impressive how these clusters still punch through the 7nm h-alpha filter.

 

I would think this qualifies as "rich field" 

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Edited by Jeff Morgan, 20 October 2020 - 10:18 AM.

[Jeff Morgan]

Another one you don't see or hear much about - Sharpless 2-22. Of course, being only 2° west of M8 might have something to do with that ...

 

But if you can tear yourself away from the Lagoon, it is still a nice view.

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[Jeff Morgan]

And two degrees east of Sh 2-22 ... M8 & Company.

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Edited by Jeff Morgan, 25 October 2020 - 11:50 PM.

[Jeff Morgan]

Open cluster M7 with dark nebula B283, B286, and B287 in attendance.

 

Globular cluster NGC 6453 is also visible, but only as a small patch at such a low power.

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[Jeff Morgan]

M24, the Sagittarius Star Cloud. Many dark nebula also visible: Barnards 92, 93, and 307. Plus LDN 314 and 315. Higher magnification reveals a few open clusters too, NGC 6603 is the small cloud near center.

 

This shot was unfiltered. With a h-alpha filter the entire area is bathed in nebulosity.

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Edited by Jeff Morgan, 30 October 2020 - 10:28 AM.

[REC]

As this thread is a bit quiet, I’d thought I’d start posting a few images and hopefully others will do so as well.

I’ve decided to start with some old ones from back in August 2018 when I’d just got my huawei smart phone. In pro mode this phone can do up to 30 seconds exposure and also has a nice separate mono lens. I noticed an immediate improvement from my previous smartphones. 
These were taken through a 72mm f6 altair refractor with a 55mm plossl in afocal mode. They are with a pvs-14 with a photonis intens 4g tube. The 72mm was part of a quest of mine at the time to get a very wide field of view and I was quite happy with the results (stars seem reasonably well corrected across the field of view). I have to say I don’t think I’ve used this scope since these photos were taken - I ended up preferring slightly larger refractors like the Tak fsq85.

In order these are North American, heart and soul and California nebula (old stalwarts!!). 30 second exposure with 50 iso and 6nm astronomik ha filter.

All very nice and sharp stars too! This is what you see at the eyepiece?

[Eddgie]

Another one form Inks Lake. SQM-L was 20.9. 

 

Trifid Nebula

 

Taken with a Galaxy S9.

 

1/2 second at f/1.5 ISO 1000.  Single exposure.

 

Scope was the 10" working at about f/3.44 (876mm focal length). Prime focus. 6nm Narrow Band filter.

 

I think it was better in real time, but as I always say, I am not very good at doing cell phone captures. 

Edited by Eddgie, 30 October 2020 - 11:16 AM.

[Jeff Morgan]

Barnard 312. IIRC, on that particular night the weight of of the cell phone adapter rotated the diopter rings. Looking closely, the brighter stars are out-of-round ever so slightly.

 

Another excuse to go back and shoot it again 

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Edited by Jeff Morgan, 01 November 2020 - 02:36 PM.

[gatorengineer]

Nice shot Eddgie....  Wondering if the stars are that nice and round Afocally as well......

[Jeff Morgan]

Another profitable area is sometimes referred to as the "False Comet", the bottom portion of Scorpius before it wraps to the tail.

 

Without a hydrogen alpha filter the area is awash in stars (two NGC clusters, a Trumpler, and a Collinder). Even without a filter the area is aglow with the hint of nebulousity. Add that filter and the Prawn cluster leaps out as one of the brighter nebula in Scorpius.

 

The Prawn is bright enough that you can go with less reduction, revealing considerable interior detail lost in the low power view.

 

I liked this exposure at 1/3 second and ISO 800, very faithful to the naked eye impression.

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Edited by Jeff Morgan, 09 November 2020 - 05:48 PM.

[Jeff Morgan]

One of the projects that the NV eyepiece has allowed me to undertake is observation of all the Sharpless Catalog objects. At this date I am still short seven (7) or so of the 313 objects in the catalog (counting the known errors as "successes"). The large majority of them from my suburban (SQM 20.5) back yard.

 

But as this photo illustrates, it's not that easy. My plan was to capture Sh 2-50 which SkySafari shows as neatly nestled between Sh 2-45 and Sh 2-49 (more commonly known as the Swan and Eagle, respectively). Then I remembered that SkySafari has a positional error on Sh 2-50, about 1 degree west of actual! (As good as SkySafari is, it has numerous positional errors and even more glaring omissions.)

 

Clearly, I captured a substantial nebula between the Eagle and the Swan, with an even brighter patch slightly left and above center. But none of them are Sh 2-50! A clean miss on that one, I will need to go back for it next summer.

 

Using galaxymap.org, Reiner Vogel's Sharpless Atlas, Dean Salman's CCD Images of the Sharpless Catalog, and Bracken's Astrophotography Sky Atlas indicates the candidates I have placed in the photo title.

 

Visually, this all seems to be a connected field. Like seeing several plants in a yard, and washing away the dirt to see they are in fact a single plant with interconnected roots. Perhaps there are line of sight pairings with these being at different distances?

 

While I normally don't try to get too wrapped up in six-decimal accuracy efforts (I am under no illusion that I am doing science - it is a hobby for me), sleuthing correct ID's can be vexing and fun at the same time.

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Edited by Jeff Morgan, 13 November 2020 - 10:20 PM.

[Eddgie]

 

Clearly, I captured a substantial nebula between the Eagle and the Swan, with an even brighter patch slightly left and above center. But none of them are Sh 2-50! A clean miss on that one, I will need to go back for it next summer.

 

 

Nice image!

 

I remember reporting maybe 3 year ago, using my at that time new Boren Simon 6" under Bortle 2/3 skies, that I could go between the Swan and Eagle without having any spot in between them that there was not nebula present. That makes it very difficult to actually identify some nebula.  There is so much that even in the 2.4 degree field of the Boren Simon, in this region of the sky, there is almost always nebula in the field.

 

This was the first time I reported on my technique of fast pannning, where I used Sky Safari to find a part of the sky that seemed to have little or  no nebula, start there, and pan into the area where there was a nebula I was trying to find. Often this area would become more obvious if I panned into it rather than simply tried to point at an area.   The problem with that is that if there is faint nebula that fills the field, you can think you are looking at dark sky, so unless you have a good reference area you pan in from, you can be looking right at your subject and not "see" it because it does not stand out. 

 

Great image though.  There is a lot to see there. 

[Jeff Morgan]

This was the first time I reported on my technique of fast pannning, where I used Sky Safari to find a part of the sky that seemed to have little or  no nebula, start there, and pan into the area where there was a nebula I was trying to find. Often this area would become more obvious if I panned into it rather than simply tried to point at an area.   The problem with that is that if there is faint nebula that fills the field, you can think you are looking at dark sky, so unless you have a good reference area you pan in from, you can be looking right at your subject and not "see" it because it does not stand out. 

 

I like that idea! Using GOTO, it is something that would not come immediately to mind.

[Jeff Morgan]

Eastern Serpens is an emission nebula playground indeed. Another nice little catch is Sharpless 2-46, also known as GUM 80, RCW 158, or LDN 58.

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[Jeff Morgan]

Perhaps the 2nd best nebula in Serpens, Sh 2-54:

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[Jeff Morgan]

I had hoped to catch Sh 2-50 before Serpens was too low in the west. Unfortunately, that did not work out for 2020. So to round out Serpens, Sharpless 2-59 (center) and 2-60 (upper).

 

The open cluster NGC 6664 is also strong enough to look good through the 7nm filter. SkySafari shows this cluster as co-located with Sharpless 2-59, another database error in SkySafari. As you can see it is immediately east of Alpha Scuti, the brightest star in this image.

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