This weekend I shot a lot of frames to capture Comet Hartley2. Because the stacked picture was a little disappointing, I dicided to make an animation. This is the result! (click on th link below...)

Animation Comet Hartley2

Jupiter and my C8 again

After some collimation the C8 scope looks just fine. Image taken on september 22nd 2010. This image consits of 830 frames, taken with a Philips SPC900.

Jupiter with C8

Finally the Celestron C8 is restored. Last night I had to make some test images To see if the telescope was reassemble in a correct way. This image was taken with a Philips SPC900 webcam. 900 frames where stacked in Registax. The C8 was placed on an EQ6 Syntrek mount. At the left hand side of the image is Io visible.

The effect of a Ha filter

This weekend the new Ha-filter arrieved. This 12nm EOS clip-inn filter had to be put up for the test. The week before I allready had the chance to image NGC281; The Pacman nebula. So I added 12 frames of Ha (360 seconds at ISO1600). After scouting the internet on Ha processing I came up with this result. Left without Ha signal; right with Ha signal.

ngc 6888 2010

ngc 6888 2010
Originally uploaded by dutchskywatcher

Nice those warm summer nights. Astrophotography is wonderfull during this time of year. Taking pictures at warm temperatures. A setback is the amount of noise the camera picks up. This is the Cressent nebula (NGC 6888). This nebula born due to a Wolf Rayett star that shedded it's outer layer. The picture consists of 20 frames; exposure time is 5 minutes at ISO800.

m65-m66-ngc3628 - 2010

m65-m66-ngc3628 - 2010
Originally uploaded by dutchskywatcher

This is the latest ateempt on the "leo triplet". This photo is uploaded via Flickr. It also has the new website logo from the website astrodigitaal, wich i use. Let's see how this goes :-).

Messier 101

To fight the noise in the picture I did two things; Decrease the ISO value and simply take more frames. For this image I used 45(!) frames. By far the most frames I made for just one image. The total exposure time is almost 4 hours. The stacking was done with DeepSkyStacker. The final touch-up was done with Photoshop.

Messier 13 (again)

With the (already not so new anymore) modified Canon I had to have a go at Messier 13. This massiv globular cluster is one of the brightest in the sky. For this image I used two sets of images; one as general image; and one for the core - to prevent overexposure. In total the image has an eposure time of 90 minutes. I used the ISO1600 setting; a little over the top. The temperature outside is to high for this setting but who an I to complain :-)

Messier 106

This image has an exposure time of 2h45m. Messier 106 is a spiral galaxy in Canis Venatici. M106 is at a distance of about 22 to 25 million light years away from. It is also a Seyfert Galaxy. It is suspected that part of the galaxy is falling into a supermassive in the center. NGC 4217 in the lower right corner is a possible companion galaxy of Messier 106.

Messier 109 in Ursa Majoris

This is the longest exposure up till now! 3h45m! In this picture are Phad (the bright star in the upper right corner and one of the stars of "the pan" in the Big Dipper) Messier 109 (the bright barred spiral galaxy in the lower left corner. Furthermore there are several dimmer galaxies visable.

Horsehead nebula

This image is made on februari 16th. I used 40 frames with an exposure of two and a half minutes at ISO1600. This is a quick processing job. I'm sure that with some more time and effort this could be better :-). The horsehead nebula is in the constellation Orion, at a distance of 900 lightyears.

Messier 42 in HDR

To make this High Dynamic Range picture I used two series of frames; 20 frames at 30 seconds and 15 frames of 3 minutes exposure. The frames where stacked in Deepskystacker. The HDR image was created in Photoshop. A Highpass filter was also applied.

Mars, 31ste of januari

This is Mars on the 31ste of januari. For this image I used 1250 frames, stacked with Registax. Photoshop was used to add some more sharpness.

Apparature; 8" Skywatcher Newton; Philips SPC900 webcame; Televue 2x Barlow. The webcam used its internal zoom function (2x).