Welcome to my March astrophotography blog post. This month I was asked if I’d share information about the photos I take, specifically how long the exposures are and the configuration of my telescope. I took 38 photos of astronomical objects over 4 days this month, and rather than detail the specifics of each photo, I’ll try to summarize that information at the end of this blog.
Let’s get started. In February my last photo was taken with my phone camera of the Moon, Jupiter and Venus lined up just after sunset. This month started out with Jupiter and Venus in conjunction, taken from Hwy 16A just east of downtown Custer in the early evening.
The other pair of celestial objects I captured was galaxy M 100 and the dwarf planet Ceres. Ceres is the largest object in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Discovered in 1801, it was classified as an asteroid for years, but it was reclassified a dwarf planet due to its size in 2006. It makes up about 25% of all the mass in the asteroid belt. It is believed to have large amounts of water and ice and may have liquid water under its crust. It is 588 miles in diameter and is massive enough to be shaped by its own gravity. On the 18th I took a photo of galaxy M 100 so I could compare it with when Ceres did the transit on the 26th. Ceres was about 13.3 light minutes from Earth, whereas M 100 is about 56 million light years (Mly) away.
I spent time in the constellation Coma Berenices this month. First off is C 35 (NGC 4889) known as Coma B. Most galaxies I photograph are 2.5 to 80 Mly away. Coma B is 308 Mly away, and M 4921 is 320 Mly out. They must be very massive and bright if my telescope’s little 8” mirror can spot them! Nearby those two is M 99 and is “only” about 45 Mly away. NGC 4302 & NGC 4298 are interacting spiral galaxies, at 55 and 53 Mly away and are interesting in that one is seen on edge and the other is more face on. And finally, I ventured to C 38 (NGC 4565), the Needle Galaxy, because Sky and Telescope magazine is featuring it in their May issue. It’s a cool edge on galaxy.
In constellation Canes Venatici I found a few objects I could photograph. C 29 (NGC 5005 is a spiral galaxy and in the photo you can spot some of its dust lanes. NGC 5033 and M 94 are both spiral galaxies as well.
In constellation Leo I captured several galaxies. C 40 (NGC 3626), M 95, M 96, NGC 3344 (a great display of its spiral arms), and a photo with 3 galaxies close together (NGC 3384, NGC 3389 and M 105). NGC 3628, M 66 and M 65 make up the Leo Triplet galaxies. When I saw that I could capture the 3 together in two photos, I made them into a mosaic. NGC 3190 are four galaxies known as the Leo Quartet. In that group, if you look closely, the smallest one, NGC 3187, seems to have one end point up and the other down. In larger telescopes those 90° turns are very dramatic looking. The center galaxy really shows its dust lanes, too.
Other galaxies of interest were small galaxies near NGC 4216 in Virgo. If you look closely, you’ll see two edge on galaxies in the photo. Also imaged are four small galaxies in Virgo (including M 60), M 104 (the Sombrero Galaxy), NGC 4762, and NGC 4535, a galaxy with very distinct arms.
In constellation Lynx I spotted C 25 (NGC 2419), a globular cluster, and NGC 2683, the UFO Galaxy.
On the 23rd, the skies were very clear, and I once again went to M1, the Crab Nebula, to try my luck. This nebula is so intriguing! Other interesting nebulas captured were M 78, and two photos from different sections of NGC 2264.
And finally, a mosaic of the waxing crescent Moon.
Now for the details about this month’s photos and my equipment/set-up. All four nights I was able to be out with my telescope I used the same telescope configuration: Celestron 8” SCT Evolution Telescope and mount with StarSense https://www.celestron.com/products/nexstar-evolution-8-hd-telescope-with-starsense, diagonal lens, .5 Mallincam Focal Reducer, and Mallincam DS10c camera https://www.mallincam.net/skyraider-ds10c.html. No filters were used. This configuration allows me to see about a half of a degree of sky (about the width of the Moon). I have two other configurations I use with this telescope that I did not use this month. With one I remove the Focal Reducer, which gives me a narrower field of view–seeing about a quarter of a degree of sky. I use this with planets, primarily. The other configuration I use is with a lens called Hyperstar https://starizona.com/products/hyperstar-8-v4. Basically, rather than having the camera at the back end of the telescope, it is mounted in the front of the telescope, which shortens its focal length, giving me about 3 degrees of sky.
The camera I use is made for astrophotography, and I usually set it up with a frame size of 3704 x 2778 pixels, or a little over 10 megapixels total in size.
For all photos, with the exception of the ones I take of the Moon or when using my IPhone , I used SharpCap 4.0 software to Live Stack the images at with 16 second frames. SharpCap stacks and aligns each of those frames as they come in, and usually the more frames you stack, the more clear and less grainy the image is. For this month’s photos, the least number of frames stacked was eight frames (8 x 16 / 60 = 2.13 minutes of capture). The most was 62 sixteen second frames (the photo of M100 and Ceres) or 16.53 minutes of capture). My captures are generally about 10 minutes in length.
For the Moon, I captured 200 frames, each 7.8125 milliseconds long.
For post processing, I use Topaz DeNoise to clean up the images. It’s magic! I then open the images in Photoshop Elements using Open in Camera Raw and adjust the levels there before opening them in the main program. There I resize my images to 8” x 6” at 300 dpi, label them and save them in a .jpg format.
For my Moon (and planet) photos, I use PiPP software to prepare the images for stacking in AstroSurface. I use the Widgets feature in AstroSurface to help bring out details. I then post process using Photoshop Elements, as above.
If you have been following my blog for very long, you’ve probably heard me talking about how I set up my mount/telescope on a permanent pier in our yard at home. I have buried live power and a USB 3.0 cable from the pier to a back room in our house. That way, I can control the mount and run the camera from inside the house, which is handy here in the Black Hills where our evenings are seldom above freezing for much of the year. Then at the end of each evening session, I bring the mount and telescope back in the house.
Until next month, Clear Skies! -Hank
