Gallery XXXV - Deep Space - 9/22/04
The weather was clear. The "Dark Sky Gang" had left for Carter County. The moon was out. But I had hopes of imaging so I drove to the DCMO to image with the Stellacam II and the C14. After aligning the scope I imaged Albereo (alignment Star) and the moon with the Phillips ToUCam II.
Alberio
This is my first ever color star image.
It gives you an idea of the seeing as it was at the vertex.
The Moon - Straight wall
This is 40 frames of 70. It was grabbed with K3CCD and processed with RegistaX 2.
The straight wall is the best known lunar fault. The straight wall is 900 feet wide and 67 miles long. The crater just above it is called Birt. It is about 10 miles wide and 10500 feet tall. Above crater birt is the Birt Rima. I believe that this is a lava tube or some such volcanic phenomenon. It is a mile wide and 30 miles long. These "lunar valleys" are also called sinuous rilles. The larger crater below the straight wall is Thebit (with Thebit A in its wall and a smaller crater in the wall of Thebit A) this is 35 miles across and 9900 feet tall.
The seeing was poor and the moon was low. So ...
After that I put the Stellacam II on the f3 reduce and put it in place of the diagonal. The Stellacam II was set to 256 integrations, 60% gain (one big tic past 1/2 way) and the gamma on "lo". I imaged for 60 frames (about 8.5 minutes) Some objects were images with dark frame subtraction, some with out. it seemed to make little difference. The weather was hot and humid and there were many "hot" pixels a flashing on the video display. Seeing was poor. The set up was as the last time; Stellacam II output to video in jack on the analog B&W monitor and the video output from the monitor was hooked to the ImperX AD card in the lap top. Images were added on the fly in Astrovideo. Processing was done in GIMP with curves and levels.
NGC 7331
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NGC 7331 in Pegausus - a magnitude 9.6 spiral galaxy, about 49 million ly distant, 30000 ly across, 7335 is seen above the galaxy and there is a hint of 7336 above that.
The images above were shot with the quarter moon still up for 8.5 minutes, the image below is from 9/18 with no moon up and represents 2.84 minutes or about 1/3 the exposure time. This was a very pretty object on the monitor. This is one of the brightest northern hemisphere visible galaxies not discovered by Messier. Some scientists say that this galaxy looks similar to our own Milky Way galaxy. So in a way this is what our home galaxy looks like from space.
Stephan's Quintet
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I processed the data several different ways. These were seen to faintly glow on the video monitor. Notice the spiral arms visible in 7318b. There appears to be some structure in 7320 as well. 7317 looks like a blurry part of a double star below 7318 a&b. The "bar" of 7319 is seen but not the arms. I think that 7320c is visible as a faint ring aroung a star like point near the upper left of the left image. A nice Hickson galaxy cluster (HGC 92). Never thought I'd image Hickson's with a video camera. They say that these galaxies (excluding 7320?) are about 280 million ly distant. Amazing to have looked more then a quarter of a billion years back in time.
NGC 7479
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NGC 7479 -This spiral galaxy is about 105 million ly distant and is magnitude 11 visually.
It was discovered by William Herschel in 1784. A nice barred spiral. APOD image.
NCG 253 - the Sculptor galaxy
First with dark frame subtraction
And now with out
At about 8-10 million ly distance this is one, big, bright galaxy. It filled the monitor screen. Knots of stars glow as lump clouds across the screen. At 25x7' size it appears "huge". It was discovered by Caroline Herschel in 1783. This is one of the brightest galaxies outside of our own local group. It is the brightest member of the Sculptor group which happens to be the closest group of galaxies to our own local group. APOD image.
It was low in the sky and I wonder if the C-14 had started to dew over. But I turned to NGC 134 to end it all.
It appeared dimmer then its posted magnitude of 10.1 It is seen with nearby NGC 131. Both appeared less impressive then I'd hoped, but both were low and in the haze. A nice pair of spiral galaxies.
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