July 3rd 2008
Ring Nebula M57 in Lyra
6" Newtonian, Canon 350D, 8x120seconds
Large view
Compared with Hubble image
July 15th 2008
Periodic error Star trails produced by putting a brick under the North leg of the mount tripod. 30s with tracking off, then 8 minutes tracking on and then 30 seconds off again. The mount shows some 36 arc seconds of error with a high frequency component. Nothing so bad that autoguiding can't deal with it.
July 19th 2008
Dumbbell Nebula M27 in Vulpecula
6" Newtonian, Canon 350D, 8x60seconds
Alternate processing
July 22nd 2008
Globular Cluster M15 in Pegasus6" reflector, Canon 350D, ST4 autoguider, 26x30 seconds stacked with iMerge
The Moon 6" reflector, Canon 350D, 10 images at 1/500s processed with Registax
July 26th 2008
Light Pollution - Galaxy NGC7331 in Pegasus. This is a single 5 minute exposure. Autoguiding has succesfully kept the scope locked onto the stars - note that the stars near the galaxy are small and round. The effect of coma that Newtonian reflectors have can be seen at the edges of the frame - the stars are no longer round.
But the most serious problem faced living 12 miles from Birmingham is the light pollution. The sky looked black to the naked eye, but a 5 minute exposure collects considerable light from the background sky, hence the muddy brown.
Setting to black and white (256 grays) and inverting makes the smaller galaxies in the picture more obvious
The central part of the frame with much of the pollution removed. The background noise could be removed by taking several images and stacking them.
A professional image of the galaxy, at a similar scale
