astronomy.html

Since I bought my first CCD camera I've learned to love imaging the sky... However this a very challenging hobby! Nice CCD imaging means long time exposures
(can be as low as a few seconds for a bright object like M42 ot hundreds of minutes for faint and dim ones), and this means you need a good and stable (and expensive mount). Also you want to image the detailed structure of a galaxy, nebula, etc... then you need large apertures. And of course nowadays you can't get along if you don't own a decent GOTO system... And what about the CCD camera itself? You'll agree with me that more and smaller pixels is always better, also low dark currents are desirable. Finally you'd better use a guide scope (with a guide CCD of course) to compensate for defects in the gear of the mount or poor polar alignment.

Well I know very few people who has gone through all this hassle (although these get the best pictures of the sky I've ever seen). I belong to the other 99.99% of the people who loves this job but tries to get along with more modest equipment.

My current setup is a R200ss F/4 newtonian scope from Vixen on a GP-DX mount
driven by a SkySensor2000PC GOTO system. The mount lies on top of a home-made pier which i keep fixed in my terrace. I also own a MX516 USB CCD camera from Starlight Xpress which i currently use to shot black & white pictures. I plan to do LRGB (=color) images in the future, but since the future has not arrived yet, I have not started :)

Be warned, though: I live in THE place that was used to define the words LIGHT POLLUTION. This is Gavà, in Barcelona (Spain), where in the days of new moon you can see stars of magnitude 3, guess stars of magnitude 3.5 and have the ilusion you saw once a star of magnitude 4. That's why I need large exposition times to defeat the unwanted effects of skyglow...

M51 the Whirlpool Galaxy in
Canes Venatici
90 minutes exposure (10x300+10x240)
MX516 CCD camera
Vixen R200ss 8" newtonian F/4 in a GP-DX+SkySensor2000PC
Unguided

This is my first real attempt at CCD imaging of a galaxy. It is a 90 minutes total exposure shot, composed of 10 four minutes and 10 five minutes individual exposures stacked in AstroArt 3. All frames have been unguided, and I bet you know how hard getting a 5 minutes unguided exposure is. I had to achieve a very good polar aligned and train the Periodic Error Correction (PEC) of my mount, a pretty easy thing if you have a webcam and Iris, the amazing freeware program by Christian Buil.
This was taken on April 15th, 2004.

NGC4565 in Coma Berenices
45 minutes exposure (9x600/2 due to Star2000)
MX516 CCD camera
Vixen R200ss 8" newtonian F/4 in a GP-DX+SkySensor2000PC
Guided with Star2000

This is my second galaxy so far. This was taken on May, 6th 2004, but it is the actual composition of nine 10-minute individual exposures guided with the Star2000 device. This is one of my first attempts to selfguide , and it turned out to not be that bad after all :) It was a pretty windy night after few days of rain and storm, so the guide had a hard job to do at some times. In any case 9x10 minutes makes a total of 90 but since the Star2000 reduces the effective sensitivity to half the actual value of the camera, that is equivalent to a 45 minutes exposure. In any case it is a nice edge-on galaxy where you can see some detail of its intrincated structure. Final processing levels done with The Gimp.

NGC3628 in Leo
64 minutes exposure (16x480/2 due to Star2000)
MX516 CCD camera
Vixen R200ss 8" newtonian F/4 in a GP-DX+SkySensor2000PC
Guided with Star2000

On May, 7 2004 I took a series of pictures of this nice edge-on galaxy in Leo. Not much to say, just that this time I tried low resolution binning mode (500x290) to compare...

M100 (NGC4321) in Coma Berenices
90 min (15x480+5x300 but used Star2000)
MX516 CCD camera
Vixen R200ss 8" newtonian F/4 in a GP-DX+SkySensor2000PC
Guided with Star2000

Uff this one has been tough. I took a series of shots on May 15, 16 and 17 2004, and had to discard half of them due to sneaking clouds and mist. Most of the individual frames were too noisy. Still managed to stack some and do the final process with Gimp.

NGC5248 in Bootes
48 minutesxposure (16x360/2 due to Star2000)
MX516 CCD camera
Vixen R200ss 8" newtonian F/4 in a GP-DX+SkySensor2000PC

This is a small galaxy in Bootes. So small that it only filled one small spot in the center of the CCD chip. Still some detail can be seen in trhe arms of the galaxy, though...

M63 (aka NGC5055) in Canes Venatici
90 minutes exposure (45x120 secs) unguided
MX716 CCD camera
Vixen R200ss 8" newtonian F/4 in a GP-DX+SkySensor2000PC
June 17, 2004

This time I borrowed a MX716 camera from a friend of mine just
to do some tests compared to my MX516. I must admit that I love the square
pixels of this one... Comparison to other shots are not fair because in the meantime
I've been bussy working on my system. Reduced the effects of stray light,
improved my polar alignment etc etc. I must say the effort was worth it :)

M57 in Lyra
110 seconds exposure (11x10 secs)
MX516 CCD camera
Vixen R200ss 8" newtonian F/4 in a GP-DX+SkySensor2000PC

This one has been one of the easiest shot so far.
Short time exposures make life much easier. This nice nebulae in Lyre is so bright that background noise can be drastically reduced in comparison to the object depicted.
BTW I love the central stars in the midle of the nebula :)

M57 the Ring Nebula in Lyra
1000 seconds exposure with MX716 CCD camera
Vixen R200ss 8" newtonian F/7.5 in a GP-DX+SkySensor2000PC June, 27 2004

This is a close-up of M57. Actually my first experience shoting
at a somewhat large focal length. I used the Vixen Tele-Extender
for the R200SS which stops the f-ratio down to 7.5 (1500mm).
I could not believe how much harder it becomes to image! I had serious difficulties
to achieve good focus. Then decided to shot 50 20-secs shots and average them.

M57 in Vulpecula
15 minutes exposure (30x30 sec) with MX716 CCD camera
Vixen R200ss 8" newtonian F/4 in a GP-DX+SkySensor2000PC June 27, 2004

This was my first attempt at M27 with my brand new MX716. Such an amazing nebula
had to came out great with a CCD...

M17 in Sagitarius
50 minutes exposure (50x1 min) with MX716 CCD camera
Vixen R200ss 8" newtonian F/4 in a GP-DX+SkySensor2000PC July 13, 2004

After a couple of weeks off I decided to try this beauty in Sagitarius.
Even at my dirty light-polluted place this one appears bright and nice through
the telescope. Short 1 minute exposures stacked and sigma-combined did the trick.

Comet C/2001 Q4 (Neat)
360 seconds exposure (720/2 due to Star2000)
MX516 CCD camera
Vixen R200ss 8" newtonian F/4 in a GP-DX+SkySensor2000PC
Guided with Star2000

Well my first comet! I catched this one on May, 18, 2004. I took a single 720 secs. shot guiding the nucleus with the Star2000 interface. Although I need to learn how to non-linear stretch images in AA3, some detail in the tail is visible.