2014 August 5

Deep Sky Section Summer Update – from the director’s inbox

Callum Potter

Although the hours of darkness have been short, the weather has been quite good since the solstice, and a number of members have sent in images.

Here is a selection of the sort of things that have been popular viewing.

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Globular clusters have been popular targets, and here are a couple.

M13 – Iain Cartwright, Ayrshire

2014 07 13
Sky-watcher 200PDS, HEQ5 Pro, 1.25″ Barlow lens, Canon EOS60Da.
Technique: Nineteen unguided 30s @ ISO400 exposures.

M15 – David Davies, Cambridge

2014 07 31
Telescope: Equinox ED120 refractor
Camera: QSI 583 plus Lodestar OAG
Mount: EQ6
45 min of luminance in 3 minute subs, plus 25 min each of RGB in 5 min subs

NGC 6712 – Dave Finnigan, Halesowen

2014 07 21 22.59 UT
seeing 4/10, transparency fair
305mm Meade LX 200 ACF, f 6.3, DSI II Pro camera, Drizzle resolution 1.5x
L 30 x 5.7 sec

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Fred Stevenson in Amersham has been continuing with his Abell Planetaries project

Abell 56

2014/06/19
Meade 14″ SCT
Atik 314L+ ccd camera binned 2×2
Astronomik Ha filter, 4 mins x 12, 8 mins x 3

Abell 63

2014/07/22

Meade 14″ SCT
Atik 314L+ ccd camera binned 2×2
Astronomik Oiii filter, 5 mins x 7

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Paul Downing has pursuing Arp Galaxies from his observatory in Spain which is now equiped with a Planewave 12.5″ CDK telescope and QSI 683 camera.

Arp 2 2014/07/22

Arp 34 – 2014/06/26

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There have been some submissions toward the Caldwell Programme:

Sh2-155 – C9 – The Cave Nebula – Bob Sayer

Captured: 2014-07-25/6
The image is a compilation of 30 x 300 sec subs.
Televue TVNP101is
Main CCD – Artemis285 CCD b/w camera.
EQ6 mount controlled by EQMOD and PHD.
Lumicon Ha filter

IC5146 – C19 – Paul Curtis

60 minutes exposure. 10″ Meade LX200 at f6.3. Camera Starlight Xpress SX-M25. Image taken July 2014 from near Andover.

 

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Another Sharpless catalgue object emailed was:

SH2-112 – Paul Brierley – Macclesfield

Taken on 2014 July 12.
Skies were clear, but with a bright Moon low in the west, in Sagittarius.
SH2-112 is 1.5 deg NNW of Deneb. It is an H II region, circular with apparent size of about 15′
Megrez EDII 80 Triplet with Baader 7nm Ha filter and Atik 428EX.

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Chris Longthorn has been trying out a remote telescope, subscribing to the iTelescope network, this image of  M21, M20, M8 and friends

iTelescope T20, Takahashi FSQ ED 106 coupled with an SBIG STL11000M camera on a Paramount, LRGB filters, just 5 x 120 second exposures in each. This is a 95% crop from a field of view of 234 armin by 155 arcmin.

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Members observations of deep sky objects are always welcome – please contact the director, Callum Potter.