Tag: galaxy

Day and Night on La Palma – The highlights from my last La Palma holiday

/ Carsten / 3 Comments

On my last La Palma holiday I did lots of experiments with my X-T1 camera. This time I was especially looking into time-lapsing. The result is “Day and Night on La Palma” – a 5 minute video about this beautiful island. To me, La Palma is the perfect place for doing this kind of videos. In this short video I want to show the highlights of my last holiday. Lots of stars, clouds and sunsets… 🙂 In order to make this video I visited many different places of the island. Some of them were Roque de Los Muchachos, Mirador del Jable, Mirador del Time and Pico Birigoyo. The music title “Worlds” has been composed by Jacob Tyler. I found it on www.soundcloud.com. I hope you enjoy the video 🙂

For those who are interested in technical details:

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Imaging galaxies M81 and M82 from Böblingen / Germany

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Bode's galaxy (M81) and Cigar galaxy (M82) - 2015/05/18

Messier 81 (M81) is a spiral galaxy about 12 million Lj. away from earth. Messier 82 (M82) – also known as Cigar Galaxy – is a starburst galaxy which is interestingly also about 12 million ly. away from us. Both objects are located in constellation Ursa Major.

For this picture 11 light frames (600s exposure time each) were averaged. This is twice as much as the typical frame count I usually have. Therefore, there is almost no visible noise in the the final picture.

The full size image can be found here.

Clear skies!

Date2015/02/18
LocationBöblingen / Germany
ObjectBode's Galaxy (M81) & Cigar Galaxy (M82)
CameraAtik383L+
Guidingyes, QHY5-II Mono via OAG
Telescope8" GSO Newtonian
Barlow lensnone
MountEQ6Syntrek
Cooling-15°C
Luminance11x, 600s, bin: 1x1
Red9x, 150s, bin: 2x2
Green9x, 150s, bin: 2x2
Blue9x, 150s, bin: 2x2
Dark10x
Flat10x
Total exposure~2h57min.
Last updated: June 17, 2022 at 14:14 pm

Imaging the Whirlpool Galaxy (M51)

/ Carsten / 2 Comments
Messier 51 - The Whirlpool Galaxy LRGB

Today, after a long long cycling tour the weather forecast made me smile 🙂 There was a good chance that most of the clouds will go away between 23:00 and 2:00. Since the moon is going to rise at 2:11am there is a short but sufficient window to do some CCD imaging. Since I only have free view to the south from home, the position of M51 is a quite good compromise. The seeing with my f/5 GSO Newton (F=1000mm) is around 2.7″ – so this is more or less average.

Date2015/05/10
LocationBöblingen / Germany
ObjectWhirlpool Galaxy (M51)
CameraAtik383L+
Guidingyes, QHY5-II Mono via OAG
Telescope8
Barlow lensnone
MountEQ6Syntrek
Cooling-15°C
Luminance6x, 600s, bin: 1x1
Red5x, 150s, bin: 2x2
Green5x, 150s, bin: 2x2
Blue5x, 150s, bin: 2x2
Dark5x
Flat10x
Total exposure~1h40min.

Clear skies!

Last updated: June 17, 2022 at 14:20 pm

Astrophotography – Triangulum Galaxy (M33), again

/ Carsten / Leave a comment
Triangulum Galaxy (M33) - 2014/09/20

The Triangulum Galaxy is a spiral galaxy around 2.7 million ly. away from Earth. It is located in the constellation Triangulum. The Triangulum Galaxy is the third-largest member of the Local Group of galaxies, right after the Andromeda Galaxy and the Milky Way. For me this one of the best pictures I was able to capture so far. And again it is amazing to see what is possible with an amateur telescope and a mid-range CCD camera!

Date2014/09/20
LocationBöblingen / Germany
ObjectTriangulum Galaxy (M33)
CameraAtik383L+
Guidingyes, DMK31AU03.AS via OAG
Telescope8" GSO Newtonian
Barlow lensnone
MountEQ6Syntrek
Cooling-15°C
Luminance6x 600s, bin: 1x1
Red5x 300s, bin: 2x2
Green5x 300s, bin: 2x2
Blue5x 300s, bin: 2x2
Dark10x
Flat10x
Total exposure~2h15m

The image is also available in full resolution.

Clear skies!

Last updated: June 20, 2022 at 9:43 am