Clouds were a problem at Maupin and there was very little time when any good images could be taken. It was a good time for experimenting and I did just that by using a new 2.5x Barlow lens the first night. I targeted four objects, Hickson 68 (galaxy cluster), M82 (the Cigar Galaxy), M76 (The Little Dumbell Nebula), and Jupiter, all of which are fairly small. Because of generally poor seeing that night, it is difficult to say much about the adequacy of the optics of the cheap APO Barlow lens (OPT, $49.95). One of my concerns was that I might not be able to easily find and center the objects, but I was successful on every one of them. The images (except for Jupiter) are shown below. Jupiter is still too bright at minimum (0.04”) exposure. I was able to see some banding in the clouds, but the disk is still very small with the 2.5x Barlow.
The picture of Hickson 68 (90” x 16) can be compared to an earlier picture posted here (July 13, 60”x 16) to get an idea of the impact of the Barlow (size only, since seeing was very different). The bright nearby star forces short exposures due to blooming. There are four galaxies pictured, but only one is a pretty spiral, with the others being fuzzy blobs.
The picture of M82 was perhaps my best during my time at Maupin (except for the photos of the dazzling sunset I captured). The galaxy offers a lot of interesting detail and I definitely want to go back to it next year under better conditions and get more data. Both RGB and LRGB images are shown, Lum 120”x17, RGB 120” x 5, 2x2 binning).
M76 is small (even with the Barlow), but colorful. It definitely needs more exposure time. This one was Lum (120” x 9), RGB (120” x 5).
Hickson 68 (Galaxy Cluster) with new 2.5x Barlow Lens
M82 (Cigar Galaxy) RGB image with 2.5x Barlow Lens
M82 (Cigar Galaxy) LRGB image with 2.5x Barlow Lens
M76 (The Little Dumbell Nebula) in LRGB with 2.5x Barlow Lens
The second night and third nights at Maupin did not yield decent results due to wind and clouds forcing shorter exposures. The next day I went on to the Crook Co. RV Park in Prineville and spent the time cleaning out the RV, emptying the grey water tank, filling up on fresh water, and of course getting showers (one in the evening and one in the morning… it was great!). I had my bicycle, so I peddled down to a small store to get some supplies.
The next afternoon, I went on to Indian Trail Springs (site of the OSP). The first night there the clouds just got worse and we had rain and thunderstorms with no opportunity to do any imaging. The next three nights, however, were great! Wednesday was the official opening day of the star party and I imaged four deep sky objects and one main-belt asteroid (Klotho). The DSO’s were NGC253 (Sculptor Galaxy), the Cocoon Nebula, the Crescent Nebula, and M51 (the Whirlpool Galaxy). Conditions were perfect, so I took exposures that were limited only by blooming of brightest stars. I was awed by the Sculptor Galaxy, as I had never seen it before and was pleased with the images I got (Lum: 6 min. X 7, RGB 90” X 9). Auto-guiding worked perfectly this evening but I realized from this experience that I should have gotten a camera with an anti-blooming chip so that I could have gone far longer in my exposures.
The jaw-dropping Sculptor Galaxy (NGC 253) in LRGB
The Cocoon Nebula in LRGB
The Crescent Nebula in LRGB
M51 (The Whirlpool Galaxy)... one of my favorites.
The third night there I failed to get images of my two primary targets (Bubble and Pelican Nebulae) due to errors in my auto-guiding (Orion Starshoot with PHD software). The errors came during calibration and indicated that there was not enough motion of the guide-star to allow calibration. One of my neighbors pointed out that this was probably due to the object being close to the pole and that was probably the case. I didn’t want to try taking very long exposures without auto-guiding so I abandoned these objects and got images of back-up targets, the Helix Nebula and globular clusters M12 and M13. I also picked up my second-night images of Klotho (the idea being to get images on two different nights to easily pick up its motion). All of these images are shown below.
The Helix Planetary Nebula
M12 - Globular Cluster
M13 - Globular Cluster
Klotho: Top image from Aug. 11 and bottom image from Aug. 12. Arrows indicate the position of Klotho, listed as magnitude +11. This asteroid is in the main belt and is fairly large at about 83km diameter. The object in the lower left corner is an irregular galaxy (IC 1613) and in the upper right corner there is a cluster of small galaxies (ACO 147). This setting was one of the reasons I chose to image this asteroid.
The next day I found out from another RCA imager that there is a setting in PHD called “Calibration Step Size” that, at my focal length, can be set higher to allow more motion of the guide star. I moved it from its default value (500ms) to 3000ms and was able to successfully auto-guide on the Bubble Nebula my last night at OSP. I still got the same failure to calibrate on the Pelican Nebula, so next time I’m just going to have to run longer exposures without guiding and see how it works out. As a substitute, I imaged a part of the Veil Nebula (NGC 6992) and also M101 (spiral galaxy).
The Bubble Nebula
The Veil (NGC 6992)
M101 (Spiral Galaxy)
Though I only had a little over 3 days (out of 7) of good conditions for imaging, I’m pretty happy with what I got out of it… both in the new learning and in the images.
