Night of Astrophotography
Now that I have my new set-up and dark skies (moon is down and I’m at a remote location outside of Ottawa), I’m able to start to seriously test out the scope/mount abilities (sans Auto-Guiding). The above picture is the Great Orion Nebula (M42 / NGC1976) and, just above it, the Running Man Nebula (NGC1975).
Next is the Pinwheel Galaxy (M101 NGC5457) which is visible year round in Ottawa’s Night Sky.
Here are some other (much fainter) Galaxies that are located near the Pinwheel Galaxy. The Pinwheel Galaxy would be located just bottom left of this photo. This is a “oops” shot as I bumped the tripod but also a “wow” shot as I didn’t know there was so much around this galaxy.
Next, I took a picture of the Whirlpool Galaxy (M51 NGC 5194), which is just on the other side of the star Alkaid, which is the star that is the end of the Big Dipper Handle.
No I didn’t zoom in the telescope, this is just a crop of the picture above to show detail.
You can start to see some star streaking in the above image, this is due to 3 factors. wind, polar mis-alignment, and/or periodic error in the worm gear.
Next, I ramped up the Nikon D90 to its highest ISO, 6400 (Hi1.0) to try to get some faint targets. What I was able to photograph was the Flame Nebula in the Orion Nebula (is Around the Left Most Belt Star Alnitak). If you look really hard, you can just make out the Horse Head Nebula but it’s faint (bottom left part of this photo).
Pushing the set-up further, I was able to capture the Rosetta Nebula. Initially, in the picture, it looked like a star-cluster so, in Photoshop, I had to really pull out the Nebula itself. The Star Cluster and Nebula have several identifying tags, NGC2237, NGC2238, NGC2239, NGC2244 (the Nebula Itself), and NGC2246. It’s called the Rosette Nebula because it resembles a Rrose (which you can just make out in this photo.)
Finally, here is a Hit List of all the Objects that I captured in my photos (100% crop for the smaller NGC Objects). Note: NGC5477 was captured in two pictures and is listed twice on purpose.
Great stars. Thanks for sharing.