Messier Hunting 2012-04-20

It was a Friday night and the sky was exceptionally clear. With this kind of rare condition and timing, I surely won't waste the opportunity to image something. I took out my 80mm f/5 short tube scope on a CG-4 mount and did a quick polar alignment.As I didn't have a polar scope, my polar alignment definitely needs some fine tuning, Then I started hunting some good deep sky jewels. My first target was the Whirlpool galaxy in Canes Venatici. I usually associate this target with the constellation Ursa major and the Big dipper asterism because I always use the dipper handle to find this target.

After a bunch of 25 seconds shots, I switched to my next Messier target, the globular cluster M5 in Serpens.

Then the easy to find M4 and finally M8 and M17.

M4, the Cat's eye globular cluster

M8, the Lagoon Nebula in Sagittarius

M17, the Swan or Omega Nebula

While imaging, I was also scanning the sky with my 15x70 binoculars. The summer sky is littered with good astro targets for binoculars. You'll almost never run out of targets to observe with a simple binocular even in a not-so-dark location. The imaging session was long and tiring. My session ended at half-past-two in the morning.

Deepsky and Planetary Imaging 2012-04-14

It's Saturday evening and the sky is clear. I decided to capture some targets to satisfy the urge. My initial target was the ringed planet. The seeing was about average, there were times when the planet would become blurred for a second or more then came up sharp again. Nevertheless, I captured it and result can be seen below.

After I captured several clips of the planet, I decided to do some deep-sky astronomy when I saw the clarity of the sky. I switched to my widefield scope, the ST-80. My initial target was the M4 globular cluster using a piggy-backed Powershot SX120.

Then I captured the M51 galaxy using afocal setup. I wanted this target long ago, but I just didn't have the chance to image it again after an initial lousy image. Visually, I couldn't see M51. I just followed the star map and point the scope to the exact spot and fired my camera. Even a single 25 seconds exposure frame at ISO800 was enough to reveal the galaxy pair. The image below is a stack of 8x25sec exposure at ISO800.

M51, the Whirlpool galaxy

I expected the Milky way to be visible from Cainta, because I have seen it from a place with even worse light pollution like Manila during a rare evening with less light pollution, but I never expected it to be easy. The central bar was evident when I saw it. I guess if there's a light post in my field of view, I won't be able to see it, but to my dark adapted vision, it was relatively easy.  I took several widefield shots of our home galaxy.to end my observation. The images can be seen below.

Quick Deep Sky Imaging 2012-04-11

When I arrived home from work, I saw a clear sky waiting for me. I wasted no time and carried my imaging stuffs to my observing spot. In the recent months, I haven't imaged any deep sky target and concentrate my imaging on the 2 planetary targets namely Mars and Saturn. Now, I wanted another deep sky shot. I replaced the 127mm maksutov installed on the mount with a short tube 80mm refractor.

I did a rough polar alignment, then started searching for the target I have in mind: the Carina Nebula. I know that the nebula is somewhere between the southern cross and the tail of Canis major, so I started the search there. I was surprised that I couldn't find this relatively easy target with the short tube. I went back to my room, picked up my 10x50 binocular and scanned the sky with it. Still I couldn't find it. Then I tried to scan the sky without any optical aid. There I noticed that I was fooled by the "False cross". The real southern cross is a short hop to the left. With the real cross in sight, I found the nebula easily with my bins.

After finding my target, I aimed my scope at the target and started imaging. After around 20 shots, the target was covered by a raised section of the roof. So I moved my scope, did a rough polar alignment again and captured another target just beside the nebula, the rich open cluster NGC3532.

 Eta Carinae Nebula with the Keyhole nebula in the middle

NGC3532

After capturing these 2 targets, I went back to my room and performed the usual process of aligning, stacking and post processing the frames.