Galaxies

March 06 2010

Object: M31

Date: October 1999

Exposure: 30 Min

Film: Kodak PJ400

Equipement: 10" f/10 Meade LX-6 with piggy backed f/2.8 80-200 Tokina AT-X

Guide Scope: Manully Guided with 10" f/10 Meade LX-6 and a Vixen GA-4

Hardware & Software: HP S20xi film scanner, Hamrick Software's VueScan, The raw image scans were processed and cropped using Picture Window.

Info: M31, also called the the Great Andromeda Galaxy is at a distance 2.93 million light years.

If you look carefully the two smudges you see in the center of this image are the galaxies M81 &  M82. Captured on Kodak PJ400 with my f/2.8 80-200 Tokina AT-X zoom and 2x teleconverter piggy-backed on my 10" Meade LX6. The nasty teleconverter added a lot of coma and light roll-off in the corners to the image. This image was scanned using a HP S20 film scanner and then a gash put in the negative by the photo lab was repaired using Picture Window by DL&C. Light pollution also took a major toll on this image.

Object: NGC891

Date: October 15, 2006

Location: "Bear Bluff" Near Mayfield, Michigan

Exposure(s): 10x 6 Min @ 400ISO

Camera: Konica Minolta Maxxum 7D

Equipement: 10" f/10 Meade OTA w/GEG and focal reducer at f/7.5 on Losmandy G-11

Guide Scope: ETX90 OTA and SBIG ST-4

Software & Processing: RAW image files were dark frame subtracted and converted to Tif files using my RawCore test converter. The Tifs were then aligned and stacked using Registar 1.0.7 and then processed and cropped using Picture Window Pro.

Other Notes: First time I had a chance to try my 7D from a fairly dark site. I needed to take a few more dark frames but the focus and tracking were very nearly perfect.

Info: NGC891 is also often called "The Edge On Galaxy".

Object(s): NGC 891, NGC 898, NGC 906, NGC 909, NGC 911, NGC 914 & others
Location: Great Lakes Star Gaze 7 (Gladwin, MI)
Date: September 2009
Mount: Losmandy G-11
Exposure: 24x10 Min Modified Canon Rebal XT (350D) @ 800 ISO (21 Darks, 55 Flats)
Guiding: SBIG ST-4 thru ETX90 OTA
Processing: DSS & PWP