March 1st Astrophotos, Bedford, NH

This was my first time out since the New Year!  I had planned to do some "first light" experiments up at the camp with the new refractor (having just undergone a refracectomy), but the weather forecast was dismal, so I stayed home.  Fortunately, Friday night into Saturday morning was crystal clear until 3:30am.  Here are the pictures.

Here are a couple of photos of M51, the whirlpool galaxy in Canes Ventici (think Big Dipper).  This is a fascinating grand design spiral galaxy which had a recent flyby with another galaxy NGC 5195.  While the resolution of this photo precludes the ability to see much of the details of the interaction, closer inspection would show that the tidal force of 5195 flyby literally tore two spiral bands out towards it.  This pair is located about 33 million light years from our Solar System.  To learn more about theseinteresting objects, click here.  The photo on the left was taken with the 12" SCT, it is a combination of two 90 minute exposures, one taken with a Lumicon deep sky filter and one without, the one with the filter was faint, but good resolution, the one without was awash in pinks and reds from skyfog, I combined them and processed the excess fog out.  That photo was taken on the new supra 400, I'm quite happy with the results.  The one on the right is a 90 minute exposure on hypered tech pan, that's the spiral and companion just left of center.  I developed that myself, my first successful development!

My first hydrogen alpha photo!  Just to the left of Alnitak (the bright star left of center) you can see the flame nebula, and below it, if you squint real hard, you can see the horsehead.  Obviously, this 60 minutes at f/7 was nowhere near enough to get enough density on the film (hypered tech pan).  The idea behind hydrogen alpha imaging is that you can get high contrast b&w images with depth of field but only on the hydrogen alpha wavelength (656.3 nm).  I'm going to try this filter with my 200mm f/3.5 lens and see if I can get more depth.  To read more about hydrogen alpha imaging, click here.

Here's a 60 minute exposure of the Horsehead nebula in Orion.  I was quite surprised and pleased with the focus and lack of trailing with this photo as I was getting pretty high errors on the tracking.  This was taken on supra400 film, prime focus 12" f/10 SCT.