TriffiD took a picture

hm..u re probably right..also closer to the galactic center means more "traffic"...guess we got to look at galaxies edges to imagine long ago d00med aliens....reminds me of sting sumhow Smile

_________________

	Blueberry wrote:
	yeah, quote me harder, bitch

and again - great work! more of that please!

_________________
Deimos: His name means dread, and he was a fearsome son of Bull & Dirty the fearful gods of war. He always attended his gay fathers on the battlefield, along with his compadres.

It's all very intuitive Triff and quite fascinating.

Do you take this kit out to special locatios or do you have an automated roof on your house that opens? If you go out into the field with your kit, do you take sandwiches or a camp stove to heat up some wurst al fresco?

Question

_________________

	d3im0s wrote:
	and again - great work! more of that please!

Thank you! I will show you more as soon as the bloody weather decides not to send me one low pressure system after another - in fact I had not a single clear night since the last days of may. Evil or Very Mad

	Spliffy wrote:
	Do you take this kit out to special locatios or do you have an automated roof on your house that opens? If you go out into the field with your kit, do you take sandwiches or a camp stove to heat up some wurst al fresco?

To begin with: today I am happy not to be Italian. So nothing al fresco for me, thank you very much. Twisted Evil

Right at the moment I am not able to leave my spawn with the telescope. Not because it weighs about 150lbs but because I need a decent power supply for the mount, cameras and my notebook pc. There are suitable batteries, that would do, but they are - guess what: expensive. Mad

And to kill any romantic fantasies of sitting under a sky full of stars, having a nice barbecue: You will avoid anything warm like a stove near the telescope. Warm air ruins the photos. I even avoid smoking a pipe when I am next to the scope.

Anyways: for the time being I set everything up on my front lawn. The city is to the north and if I avoid that region of illuminated skies, it is quite ok. What I will do - probably next year - is to build an observatory (a wooden shed) with a removable roof. Like those here. Inside such a thing you can have a concrete column to mount the telescope on. That will make things a lot more comfortable.

_________________

Finally online: TriffiD's Astronomy Page

What about solar panels to power your telescope?

_________________

	Spliffy wrote:
	What about solar panels to power your telescope?

The summer sky is so bright till end of July that that could actually work... Rolling Eyes

_________________

Finally online: TriffiD's Astronomy Page

Ok, I've collected frames for the last 3 nights. Today is the 4th and last night. I hope I manage to process everything tomorrow so that I can post a new picture in the evening. So check back... Very Happy

_________________

Finally online: TriffiD's Astronomy Page

This is the nebula IC 1396A aka "The Elephant's Trunk":

(click image for a larger version)

This nebula is actually part of a much larger structure, called IC 1396 which is a star cluster with lots of gas around it. It is about 2,500 lightyears away from us. The Elephant's Trunk is a region of pretty dense hydrogen-gas in which new stars are born. One very eye-catching feature is the caveole in the tip of the trunk on the left. This hole is made by the solar winds of the two stars that you can see in it. Actually there are three stars and at an age of approx. 100,000 years they are very young.
The reddish glow to the left of the otherwise dark nebula comes from a couple of big stars, left of the imaged area. Their solar winds are so strong that the energy is enough to ionize the hydrogen which then starts to emit light.
One minor fact: The brighter star on the lower right of the caveole looks a little foggy. That is because it lights the reflection nebula "van den Bergh 142" (vdB 142) that is close in front of the trunk and physically connected to it. That is the reason why the Elephant's Trunk is often falsely referred to as vdB 142.

The picture is the result of 4 consecutive nights from dusk to dawn imaging. I took 120 pictures, 300 seconds each. So this represents a total of 10h exposure!
One really problematic thing - besides the fact that it still does not get completely dark - was that the temperature of the camera sensor did not drop below 25°C. At that temperature you get loads of noise that you can hardly deal with. The warm weather on the other hand lead to a very calm atmosphere so that you get pretty crisp images.
All in all I am very pleased with the result and hope, you enjoy it. Very Happy

_________________

Finally online: TriffiD's Astronomy Page

get us some picturz of the iss

http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/realdata/tracking/index.html

	SauBaer wrote:
	get us some picturz of the iss

Nahhhh, too boring. It is actually not even technically challenging.

_________________

Finally online: TriffiD's Astronomy Page

very nice picture again triff. I'm really enjoying this topic.

TriffiD wrote:

	SauBaer wrote:
	get us some picturz of the iss

Nahhhh, too boring. It is actually not even technically challenging.

proof? (PICTURE, PICTURE, PICTURE!!!)

and: where do you get all those fancy facts of those stars, nebulas and other phenomena from?

oh and:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/science/m68.html

_________________
Deimos: His name means dread, and he was a fearsome son of Bull & Dirty the fearful gods of war. He always attended his gay fathers on the battlefield, along with his compadres.

Not much time to take quality pic when ISS flies by I think, but it is possible with even primitive cameras, the quality just wont be that great.
I like these deep space pics more.
Very Happy

_________________

http://www.cardomain.com/ride/3332770
C4 Corvette, love her till my death.

Yeah, thanks d3im0s, I will keep posting, but with the clear skies being so nervewrackingly rare this year, I don't fancy wasting precious hours by going for the ISS. Actually you really can do this quite easily: Figure out where and when it will pass by, then point the scope to a place in its path and take a video. With my field of view, it should take about 2 seconds to pass by - enough to collect 50 to 60 frames of the ISS. Then you go and let some software stack the best of those frames to get the maximum of details.
I lately saw a picture of the ISS with docked capsule and an Astronaut outside. I doubt I can do that with my scope, though - but the ISS with its modules should not be a problem - it really is boring.

I am very happy, that at least Bio has reason enough to see that deep space is much more interesting. Taking pictures like this last one was a dream of mine for many years. The most stunning thing is, that I have seen images of this very object from the 80s, taken by professional 4m telescopes that are rubbish, compared to what amateurs can produce nowadays.

About the information I give you on the objects in my pictures: Some things I know from books, but most of it I get from wikipedia and fellow astronomers websites.

The next object will be a nebula again, but a brighter one. I am still a little torn on which one to take on - either a beautiful and easy one that everybody takes on or one that is less known but much harder to get details from. The latter would be pretty challenging - but I guess I would at least need to collect 15 or more hours of light. If there is a longer period of clear skies in August, I might try that. If I again get only two or three nights, you get the first.

_________________

Finally online: TriffiD's Astronomy Page

How about sombrero galaxy? something between distant nebulas and ISS.
or is there enough time to take pics of those?
Cool

_________________

http://www.cardomain.com/ride/3332770
C4 Corvette, love her till my death.