Sunday 18 January 2015

Comet Lovejoy C/2014 Q2

Comet Lovejoy . 16-1-15. This image was taken using a ten inch F5 reflector and an Atik 383L mono CCD camera. I only used a blue filter with a single two minute exposure with the camera set on x2 bin mode . I added the colour using Paint Shop Pro.



This image was taken using two minute subframes with matching dark frames and combined them with flat field frames to reduce the effect of vignetting in the final image .I was using my ten inch F4.8 reflector and an Atik 383L mono CCD camera . The camera was set on x 2 bin mode to increase the sensitivity .I used a blue filter to reveal the comets blue tail.



This image reveals the colours of the comet using RGB filters. Each colour channel had ten two minute sub frames and matching dark frames with the camera set on x 2 bin mode . This increased the cameras sensitivity by a factor of about four . I was using a ten inch reflector and an Atik 383L mono CCD camera.


Saturday 10 January 2015

M35 and M45

M35. This open star cluster lies in the constellation of Gemini at a distance of about 2,800 light years . I took this image using a ten inch F 4.8 reflector , PHD auto guiding and an Atik 383L mono CCD camera . I captured five minute sub frames and matching dark frames and combined them with flat field frames to reduce the effect of vignetting in the final image . The total exposure times was 15 minutes using a red filter , 20 minutes using a green filter and 30 minutes using a blue filter .



Two section mosaic of M45 . This mosaic was taken using a ten inch F4.8 reflector, PHD auto guiding and an Atik 383L mono CCD camera .I captured five minute sub frames with matching dark frames  and combined them with flat field frames to reduce the effect of vignetting in the final image.The total exposure times was 20 minutes using a red filter , 40 minutes using a green filter and 100 minutes using a blue filter . I stitched the images together using Paint Shop  Pro software