A couple weeks ago we had a lot of fun getting out the telescopes to share with friends and neighbors. A beautifully clear (& mostly bug free) night allowed us to check out the moon, many star clusters and before we were done Jupiter rose into view and stole the show. We can't wait to do it all again!
At the same time we were touring the cosmos, I had the astrograph set up capturing Messier 109 (above). This is one of the faintest objects in the Messier catalog evidenced by over 4 hours total exposure time and precious little detail to see. Although, if you consider that the light in this image began its journey to us when the dinosaurs roamed the Earth, maybe it's not so dim after all. M109 is a beautiful barred-galaxy found near the bowl of the Big Dipper. In fact, the incredibly bright star in the image is one of the main stars (Phecda) in the Big Dipper.
Photo Details
March 29 - 30, 2017
Orion 8" Astrograph on VX Mount
SBIG STF-8300C Camera
Baader MPC Mark III Multi-Purpose Coma Corrector
Skyglow filter
82 subframes at 3 minutes/frame
Total Exposure Time = 4 hours 6 minutes
Image Acquisition in CCDOps
Image Stacking in Deep Sky Tracker
Image Processing in PhotoShop
Image Acquisition in CCDOps
Image Stacking in Deep Sky Tracker
Image Processing in PhotoShop
