Sunday 22 March 2009

Colour Deep-Sky MTV-73S85HP-EX-SW-R Mintron with a 10 inch f/4.8 Newtonian


M13 the great globular cluster in Hercules (60 x 256 frame-integrated images registered and summed in AstroVideo)


M57 The Ring nebula (50 x 256 frame-integrated images registered and summed in AstroVideo)


M82 using a 0.5 focal reducer and a UV/IR cut filter (50 x 256 frame-integrated images registered and summed in AstroVideo)



M3 using a UV/IR cut filter (60 x 256 frame-integrated images registered and summed in AstroVideo)





M64 The Black-eye galaxy using a 0.5 focal reducer and a UV/IR cut filter (60 x 256 frame-integrated images registered and summed in AstroVideo)

The live images were very good. Data were recorded to DVD and the images extracted from the DVD playback into a capture card.

The globular clusters M3 and M13, the planetary nebula M57 and the galaxy M64 were rather low in the sky so they should improve as the year progresses. There was also local light pollution particularly in the direction of M64.
Dark-frame subtraction with scaling was used in AstroVideo.