ISON Updated news

Good morning,

It would seem that ISON hasn't survived its encounter with our Sun, although a fragment has emerged it is slowly fading. Below the animated image from LASCO C3, the coronagraph on the SOHO Satellite:

Here is also an excerpt from NBC News (latest):

"Previous reports of Comet ISON's death may have been somewhat exaggerated, but this time it looks like the real thing.
Remnants of the object once touted as the "comet of the century" passed through the viewing field of the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory in the wake of Thursday's close encounter with the sun — and as it passed, the bright spot that survived grew dimmer and dimmer.

"I do think that something emerged from the sun, but probably a very small nucleus or 'rubble pile.' and I fear that may have now dissolved," Karl Battams, an astrophysicist at the Naval Research Laboratory who has been studying ISON for months, wrote Saturday in a Twitter update."
See the entire article here

M42 Orion nebula

First image of the Orion Nebula with the new QHY8L camera; it consists of 10 subexposures of 360 seconds and for the center another 5x40 seconds. Also 5 darks, 10 flats and 10 bias frames. All stacked in DSS, Fits Liberator and finally PS.

ISON Perihelion

Comet ISON is approaching perihelion, stay tuned around 17:00 GMT time (UTC now) to watch live images at http://cometison.gsfc.nasa.gov/#.

Very nice site to follow, which i have been doing for a couple of months now is: http://www.brucegary.net/ISON/
It looks like ISON will hold during its journey around the Sun and we are in for quite a show in the days to come!

Clear skies!

Betelgeuse - the red supergiant

[WIKI]:

Betelgeuse, also known by its Bayer designation Alpha Orionis (α Orionis, α Ori), is the ninth-brightest star in the night sky and second-brightest in the constellation of Orion.
The star is classified as a red supergiant of spectral type M2Iab and is one of the largest and most luminous observable stars. If Betelgeuse were at the center of the Solar System, its surface would extend past the asteroid belt, possibly to the orbit of Jupiter and beyond, wholly engulfing Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars.

Betelgeuse is roughly 1180 times the radius of the Sun — able to contain over 2 quadrillion Earths (2.15 × 10^15) or more than 1.6 billion (1.65 × 10^9) Suns. That is the equivalent of Betelgeuse being a football stadium like Wembley Stadium in London with the Earth a tiny pearl, 1 millimeter in diameter, orbiting a Sun the size of a mango.

M13 - Globular Cluster in Hercules (NGC 6205)

M13 was discovered by Edmond Halley in 1714, and catalogued by Charles Messier on June 1, 1764.
It is a globular cluster of aprox. 300.000 stars in the constellation Hercules at 25.100 light-years away from Earth.
M13 is about 145 light-years in diameter, the brightest star is the variable star V11 with an apparent magnitude of 11.95.

Here is my first try at M13 taken from the city:

FOV Calculator

Hi folks,

Last night i came across an extremely useful site for amateur astronomers/astrophotographers who are starting out but don't know exactly what equipment to buy. You might know what telescope you want, but are not sure exactly which camera to get (CCD or DSLR); or perhaps you already have a DSLR camera and want to acquire a telescope.
Because the question is: what will be my Field Of View ? In other words what exactly will you see using your combination of camera and telescope. This of course also depends on what objects you plan to capture.
The below website allows you to select from a variety of telescopes, cameras and then select the celestial object from a database (Object menu) and it will show the FOV and also the portion of the image you can see with the given combination. You can also simulate adding Barlows or Focal reducers.
Very nice !!

The link:

http://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/field-view-calculator

Cheers !

Another image of M42

The below image is also a stack of 30 subframes of M42, but this time done with DeepSkyStacker, then tweaked a bit with the FITS Liberator and then the RGB channels were assembled in Photoshop and some additional processing was also done.

The Great Orion Nebula (M42)

The below images are edited in Photoshop from a stack of 30 subframes at 30sec exposure and they represent, as far as i can tell, a small portion in the center of the well-known Orion Nebula.

Stay tuned for more images !

M57 - the Ring Nebula

WIKI:

"The Ring Nebula (also catalogued as Messier 57, M57 or NGC 6720) is a planetary nebula in the northern constellation of Lyra.[5] Such objects are formed when a shell of ionized gas is expelled into the surrounding interstellar medium by a red giant star, which was passing through the last stage in its evolution before becoming a white dwarf."

Jupiter version 2

An even more sharpened image of Jupiter, also 3 of its moons: Io, Europa and i think Callisto.

The Moon 39%

Here are a few images taken last night with the moon partially illuminated (39%), without guiding, short exposure times:
Without Barlow

With red hue effect:

With Barlow 2.25:

Watch out for ISON on Oct 15th !

Hi guys,
as you probably know, comet ISON has and is still creating quite a hype on the Internet.
So, for us guys in the Northern hemisphere, watch out.. 'cause the morning of October the 15th is the one you don't want to miss!
As the simulation image below shows, at around 5:15 a.m. (that is in my location: 44°26'00.0" N 26°06'00.0" E) you will be able to easily observe the next aligned three objects: comet ISON, Mars and the star Regulus. At that hour they will be high enough in the sky to be observable with ease.

So set your alarm early ! Or as I probably will do, stay up all night :)

Cheers!

M103 (NGC 581)

Discovered by Pierre Méchain in 1781.

Open cluster Messier 103 (M103, NGC 581) is one of the "latest additions" (together with M101 and 102) to his catalog, which Charles Messier included from Pierre Méchain's report, but had no occasion and no time to observe before publication. M103 is one of the more remote open clusters in Messier's catalog, at about 8,000 light years.
Found in the constellation Cassiopeia, the cluster M103 is aged around 20 million years and is a fascinating object to photograph. You can see in the middle an orange star - this is a pretty amazing red giant star.

Stack of 20 images @ 20sec - DBK21AU04.AS Date taken: 05.10.2013

NGC 6853 (M27) - Dumbbell Nebula

This is the first image i took with the current equipment C6-ngt and the Imaging Source CCD. It is heavily edited and not a very good job i guess, but still..

Info
The Dumbbell Nebula (also known as Apple Core Nebula, Messier 27, M 27, or NGC 6853) is a planetary nebula in the constellation Vulpecula, at a distance of about 1,360 light years. This object was the first planetary nebula to be discovered by Charles Messier in 1764. Planetary nebula are shells of gas shed by stars late in their life after using up all of their nuclear fuel. The star then ejects a significant portion of its mass in a gaseous shell, which is illuminated by its extremely hot central star, which is just the core left from the original star. This a normal process for stars in a late period of their life which also our sun will undergo in a few billion years. Planetary nebulae do not last long in cosmic terms, the shell of gas expands and diffuses becoming invisible and the star turns into a white dwarf. Most planetary nebula are bipolar, meaning symmetric with respect to one axis which is thought to be the rotation axis of the original star.

Stack of 6 images @ 65sec
Equipment used: C6-NGT with DBK21AU04.AS (with IRcut filter)

First planet Jupiter

Hi all, This is a first attempt at Jupiter; i think it turned out pretty well considering it was taken from a highly polluted city :)

Stack of 60 images @ 1/250sec exposure
Equipment used: C6-NGT with DBK21AU04.AS camera / Barlow 2.25x