M31

M 31, The Andromeda galaxy. This galaxy lies at a distance of about 2.3 million light years, the light possibly left this galaxy before the first human beings walked on this planet. This image is a five-section mosaic stitched together using Paint Shop Pro software. I was using my 4 inch f/6.3 refractor, a Vixen Atlux mount, PHD auto guiding, Astronomik filters, H Alpha, O111, and Blue. The camera was an Atik 383L mono CCD camera. I also combined 60 minutes of some old H Alpha data taken using an 80mm f/6.3 refractor to reveal some of the nebulosity in the spiral arms. I captured five-minute sub frames with matching dark frames and combined them with flat field frames and bias frames to reduce the effect of vignetting and noise in the final image. The total exposure time for each mosaic section using the 4 inch refractor was 10 minutes using a H A filter, 10 minutes using an O111 filter and 40 minutes using a blue filter.

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NGC 7331 and Stephan's Quintet.

NGC 7331. This galaxy lies in the constellation of Pegasus. Looking about one degree to the south west we have a group of galaxies NGC7320, NGC7319, NGC7318 and NGC 7317, commonly named Stephan's Quintet, which was discovered back in 1877.  I captured this image on three separate evenings under very hazy sky conditions with stars only visible down to magnitude 3.5. The telescope I was using was a 4 inch F/6.3 refractor, a Vixen Atlux mount, PHD auto guiding, a set of Astronomik filters and an Atik 383L mono CCD camera. I captured five minute and 60 second sub frames and combined them with matching dark frames, flat field frames and bias frames to reduce the effect of noise and vignetting in the final image. The exposure time was 110 minutes using a H Alpha filter, 50 minutes using an O111 filter and 145 minutes using a blue filter. A total exposure time of 5 hours and 5 minutes. 

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IC1396 Hubble palette

Here we have the final composition of IC1396 with colour correction and noise reduction.

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