This takes planning *AND* strategy!

I'm on a roll with catching up on lots of stuff and have been meaning to do this for some time now.

Yes, this is:

Jacob 8weeks old as Luke Skywalker (July 2004)

Megan 9weeks old as Princess Lea (July 2006)

Brian 9weeks old as Han Solo (February 2010)

Galaxies galore!

Check out the mouse over version for labels!

http://maphilli14.webs.com/Astronomy/8-Webs/DSO/Galaxies/MAP-M84-M86-201000308-large.jpg

Catchup on some DSLR processing - more coming!

Pacman nebula - I didn't think this was enough data and was going to hit it up another night, but it slipped and well, here it is with 1 hour:



IC 342 / Caldwell 5 is a small galaxy.  I think I need better planning software, this was a bit of a tough target but I was happy to see it in the end...

My simple M109 - barred spiral galaxy

I saw the Cloudy Nights (http://www.cloudynights.com/) challenge the other month and was immediately struck by how cool this barred spiral looked.  I had to try and it turns out to be a somewhat hard target at 10th magnitude and small to boot.  Here's my shot.  I wasn't even sure I had in a single 1-2 min test shot and conditions we just average on the transparency with a waxing moon early in the session.  I'm still pretty happy with the result!

Owl Nebula (M97) & M108 Galaxy

This is my single most amount of DSLR data in a single session or night to date.
5min (300s) x 42 = 3.5 hours at ISO 1600

For those not yet introduced to this part of the sky.  M97, the Owl Nebula, is a planetary nebula with a small (visible in this image) 16th mag central star that has gone supernova.  It has pushed out two lobes of space amongst the shell of gas that make the nebula appear like owl eyes.

In the lower right is a nearly edge-on galaxy, Sc type galaxy and about 45 million light years distant.

Optics: Meade LXD55 6" Schmidt Newtonian OTA
Mount: CGE mount on JMI Wheely Bars
Camera: Canon XTi with Hutech LP Filter (LPS-P2-FF)
Focusing Aid: STI focuser
Shutter control: Hap Griffin long exposure cable
Software: MaximDL
Guiding: DMK21AF04 with a piggybacked 4" SkyWatcher via PHD and ASCOM drivers
Operating System: WinXP Lenovo T61 driven via RDP remotely
Pre-Processing: Iris per automated Jim Solomon's Cookbook
Post-Processing: PS CS2 with tips from Jerry Lodriguss

Small PS, the AAPOD today is the same field of view, but much better done!  'Grats!

http://astronomy.fm/aapod/2010-02-20_M108-and-M97-widefield.html

Mars 20100217 v84

Retooled my Mars processing routine again and got good results in avg seeing.  I stacked in Iris per my v8 routine and before handing to AstraImage I 'pretreated' with some light wavelets.  I think this came out quite well (calling it v8.4 for now)  :)

I noticed the line or front coming off the NPC and thought it was a cloud, but it looks bright in red too, does that mean it's a dust storm??

Mars 20100208 0613UT

Best seeing of the season so far!

I'm tooling around with things, but most notibly is color matching with PS. I got so tired of, more green, less green, more red.... PS did a good job of a color match to a Hubble shot. I've still got some bad artifacts and am hoping to get one more round of good seeing in the next few weeks before it gets too much smaller.

I've also got a terrible backlog.  So I hope I can learn some more and post to my site soon.

Mike

Better one from earlier, processed differently!