Tag: telescope

Looking at the Sunflower Galaxy ~8.7 billion Round-the-World trips away

/ Carsten / Leave a comment

36 million light years away – or 8.700.000.000 trips around the world! That’s the approximate distance to the Sunflower Galaxy which also has the boring acronym M63.

Tonight I decided to point my 8″ Newton telescope to this object to have a closer look. Even if I only had 2 hours of time I am still satisfied with the result. Personally, I think a sunflower looks a little different – anyway I like the shape and the structure of this object. M63 is located in constellation Canes Venatici and is not “so far” away from M51. Its apparent magnitude is about 9.3mag. Besides, I already targeted M63 a few years ago, but this new result I think is much better.

Date2016/05/02
LocationBöblingen / Germany
ObjectSunflower Galaxy (M63)
CameraAtik383L+
Guidingyes, QHY5-II Mono via OAG
Telescope8" GSO Newtonian
Barlow lensnone
MountEQ6Syntrek
Cooling-15°C
Luminance4x, 600s, bin: 1x1
Red4x, 150s, bin: 2x2
Green4x, 150s, bin: 2x2
Blue4x, 150s, bin: 2x2
Dark2x
Flat10x
Total exposure~1h10min.
m63_final_cut_border

Clear skies!

Last updated: June 16, 2022 at 14:09 pm

Star cluster Messier 44

/ Carsten / 2 Comments
photo_present_m44_small_web_qual

Tonight was the first time since mid of November with acceptable conditions for astropohotography… I don’t like this weather… However, this night it was good – at least until about 3am. For stacking I again used DeepSkyStacker 3.3.2 with Kappa-Sigma Clipping. Happy Easter! 🙂

Date2016/03/09
LocationBöblingen / Germany
ObjectMessier 44 (Star cluster)
CameraAtik383L+
Guidingyes, QHY5-II Mono via OAG
Telescope8" GSO Newtonian
Barlow lensnone
MountEQ6Syntrek
Cooling-15°C
Luminance11x, 600s, bin: 1x1
Red10x, 150s, bin: 2x2
Green10x, 150s, bin: 2x2
Blue10x, 150s, bin: 2x2
Dark2x
Flat10x
Total exposure~2h15min.
Beehive Cluster (M44) - 2016/03/09

Clear skies!

Last updated: June 16, 2022 at 14:20 pm

A quick visit at Saturn

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Saturn

While I was observing the moon I decided to quickly step by at Saturn. The image got better than I expected and so I am sharing it here 🙂 The Cassini Division (the thin black line in the ring) is clearly visible even at this low image resolution. The raw data was recorded with a DMK31AU03.AS camera and then post-processed with Registax.

Clear skies!

Last updated: June 16, 2022 at 22:53 pm