Friday, July 13, 2018

Not Mars, It's a Deep Space Object

Following the old adage, "waste not, want not . . ."

I took advantage of the dark moonless sky and tried to see and capture some deep space objects this weekend.

I'm particularly happy capturing this one because it is so dim and difficult to see.  Its a close grouping of galaxies known as "Stephan's Quintet."

Their magnitudes range from 13.9 to 16.7.  This image was captured with my 10 inch Dob and ZWO imager.


Stephan's Quintet

Here is the actual captured image from the "save as viewed" menu of SharpCap:

Stephan's Quintet
Stephan's Quintet Inverted and Labeled

I took the image above, inverted the colors, and labeled the galaxies for ease of viewing and discernment.
Stephan's Quintet with labels
Not too shabby for a 10 inch Dob from a Bortle Class 4 backyard!


4 comments:

  1. Stephan's Quintet, that's a good find!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The imager really helps in this regard. The magnitude of these galaxies is so dim that I can't see them visually.

      Delete
  2. Incredible, considering. But some nights the sky is much clearer than others. We have had a few. Of course with a scope in transit....rain is sure to come ;)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. SharpCap's live stacking and the ZWO imager really make this happen. The tracking that the Dob provides helps, of course, but the "processing gain" from the tools are really wondrous.

      Yes, you will probably suffer the new 'scope curse. Weeks of clouds. ;-)

      Delete

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