Astrophotography: Deep Sky Objects

[fort384]

Had a clear night last night, and had a chance to try out some cool new gear I bought.

This is a photo of Messier object 51 - Whirlpool Galaxy

Distance from Milky Way: 23 million light years (that's roughly 130,000,000,000,000,000,000 miles from us). Another way to think about it is the light I captured in the photograph below left the Whirlpool Galaxy 23 million years ago. Wow.


Apparent Magnitude: 8.4 (this means it is very dim, not perceivable to the naked eye, even though it's size in the sky is actually much larger than a star). By taking long exposures of the area of the sky where it resides, the details become clear.

Radius of galaxy: 43,000 light years (this means the galaxy in the photo is roughly 500,000,000,000,000,000 miles from one side to the other)

Mass: 160 billion solar masses

I find the numbers associated with our universe amazing.

Equipment:
Orion ED 80 with field flattener, f/7.5 600mm
Sirius EQ-G German Equatorial Mount
Canon 1100D

Subs (Exposures taken):
12 X Dark
15 X Bias
15 X Flat
30 X Light 240" ISO 800

(This means that the image below is a stacked image of 72 individual images, and around 3 hours of the shutter on the camera being open. The Whirlpool galaxy is so dim, it takes that long to gather enough light to get it to come into detail.)

 

[HUKIT]

Wow that really turned out very well, your starting to get some mad skills! I've been more and more into photography since I bought my Nikon D7000 last year. I may have to go out and play tonight.

 

[fort384]

Thanks! The learning curve has been steep to get to that point, but it amazes me what is out there that we just can't see!

Check out Deep Sky Stacker if you decide to do some imaging. It is a free program that simplifies things immensely. And if you get an results post them up!

 

[shellyx]

Wow! That is really cool, really love the colors

 

[HUKIT]

Did you already have the telescope and mount, or did you purchase them specificly for this?

 

[okapizebra]

Wow! That is super cool!

 

[fort384]

Did you already have the telescope and mount, or did you purchase them specificly for this?

I bought them for this. It is good entry-intermediate level gear for wide field prime photography. Essentially I am using the telescope as a 600mm prime lens.

 

[fort384]

Got another capture the other night... this is the "Leo Triplet" composed of 3 different spiral galaxies, each of which is on a slightly different angle on our view from Earth: M65, M66, and NGC 3628.

Each galaxy is approximately 32 million light years from Earth, and contain billions of stars.

This resulting image is composed of a stack of 59 total exposures, including flat frames, dark frames, off bias frames, and light frames. Total light frame time was 56 minutes.

 

[shellyx]

That's really cool!

 

[fort384]

Thanks Shelly!

I keep picking up these money-pit hobbies. Me and a buddy are building an observatory/heated/air conditioned control room out on a very dark site we have access to. The whole rig can be controlled remotely. It is a really slick setup. I was briefly into astronomy about a decade ago but gave it up when I moved to a light polluted area. Now that I have reentered with gusto, I am absolutely amazed at the advancements in technology and gear over the last decade.

Things get a little easier each time but it is immensely time consuming and can be frustrating at times to get everything just right but I suppose the challenge is what makes it fun and interesting.

 

[shellyx]

It's amazing what you've done, the pictures are really great

 

[Smcoyle87]

ummmm...whoa!

 

[fort384]

Lol. That is my reaction too every time I see a galaxy come into view the first time on my screen. It is amazing to me that this stuff is out there really in plain site. There is very little magnification involved. The galaxies pictured here are all about 1/4 the size of a full moon in the sky in apparent dimension from our view on earth.

 

[Smcoyle87]

I honestly can't believe it's in plain sight either! I live right outside of Washington DC so there is zero chance of seeing anything like this. I'm so jealous. lol

 

[fort384]

I am not too far from Chicago so my light pollution is not ideal. But none of this stuff is visible if just looking through a telescope. They are so dim it takes many minutes and even hours to build up enough light for it to come into view. For example the Leo triplet above is a composite of about an hour of light frames. The camera gathers enough photons for us to view a picture of it after the fact.

The visual aspect of it if looking through the scope might be a fuzzy grey smudge to our eye, if the atmospheric conditions were perfect.

 

[Alyxx]

So cool! I love looking at the stars, and I've thought about giving astrophotographu a try. A friend of mine dabbled with it in high school. Makes me wonder if my old film camera could be set up to do it instead of a digital one.

 

[fort384]

It is certainly possible with a film camera, but several orders of magnitude more difficult. The difficulty though is what makes it an attractive hobby to me - having something show up after all the work of polar aligning, focusing, star aligning, framing, choosing appropriate exposure settings, capturing dark, flat, and bias images, and processing is very rewarding. If it was easy, it would be boring

Got a couple more shots last night:

M101, the Pinwheel Galaxy, is a spiral galaxy in the constellation Ursa Major. It is approximately 21 million light years from Earth, and 170,000 light years in diameter, which makes it about 70% larger than the Milky Way.

Image details:

24 light frames, 240" @ ISO 800
14 dark frames
20 flat frames
20 bias frames

IC1396: The Elephant's Trunk Nebula
IC1396 is an emission nebula. It is often referred to as the "Elephant Trunk Nebula". This nebula is high in H alpha emission, so it does not show up very well with the unmodified Canon 1100d used to capture the image. Look for the elephant trunk centered left to right, about 1/3 of the way up from the bottom of the image.

Image details:
16 light frames, 240" @ ISO 800
14 dark
20 flat
20 bias

 

[shellyx]

Amazing!

 

[fishfanatic]

I am absolutely shocked! I must be oblivious to my surroundings! I thought only the Hubble telescope could capture images like these! If only I had $3000 burning a hole in my pocket, or the worlds most steady and accurate hand thank you for posting the pictures I greatly in joy seeing what is out there that my eyes cannot see on there own.

 

[Oohitsae]

Wow!! Just...WOW! I thought that only NASA could get images like these. It's amazing to see the "average" hobbyist being able to get shots like this.
I can't wait to see more!