Astronomy and DSLR Astrophotography Blog » messier

The Great Galaxy in Andromeda

admin — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 21:52:25 +0000

In the nights from 20th to 21st and 21st to 22nd August I have been capturing the Great Galaxy in Andromeda. I used my 8″ f/4.5 Newton which means 900mm of focal length and too small FOV to get the entire galaxy into one frame so I decided to make a mosaic. I spend the first night for the right part and second for the left part of the image. I combined them in Photoshop. All other data about image are:

Object: M31 and M32 (Andromeda Galaxy)
Date and Location: 20. and 21. 8. 2009, Mali Orehek, Slovenia
Exposition: 2×1 mosaic: 30 x 5min and 36 x 5min
Camera: Canon 350D, Baader mod., ISO 800, RAW
Optics: Orion Optics Europa 20cm f/4.5
Mount: Vixen GP-DX SS2K
Autoguiding: SW 80/400 with QHY5
Processed in: Iris, Ps

M31 and M32 @ photo: Primož Cigler

I hope you like it, I am very satisfied with the result. More is coming soon…

A Group of Galaxies in Virgo: M86

admin — Tue, 26 May 2009 10:24:13 +0000

I haven’t been writing here for a while. Currently I am studying for my exams … but just one month left. Then I will continue with astrophotography tutorial. Nevertheless, I managed to take photography of galaxy M86 and neighbours last weekend. The picture was caputred with my standard setup: Orion Optics 8″ f/4.5, modded Canon 350D with IDAS LPS P2 filter at ISO 800, RAW on Vixen GP-DX mount. The photography is composition of 30 images, each of 5min. I was capturing from the backyard in front of a house where is a lot of light pollution.

M86 with neighbours

I am very satisfied with the result because I have spent some nights outside recently without any useful pictures, because autoguiding wasnt’ working properly. I had to change some settings and now works again.

M51 or Whirlpool Galaxy

admin — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 20:07:56 +0000

M51 is a spiral galaxy in constellation of Canes Venatici. It’s other name is Whirlpool Galaxy. In fact there is not a single galaxy but it’s two of them: one larger and another smaller. They are located in a distant approximately 23 million ly from us. M51 is one of the object which can be found in Messier’s catalogue of deep-sky objects. It’s frequent target of amateur astrophotographers on the northern hemisphere. The object is 9.0 magnitude and can be seen with binoculars and smaller telescopes.

M51 (Whirlpool Galaxy) @ Primož Cigler

The picture was taken on 8th of April 2007 with Orion Optics Europa 8″ f/4.5 on Vixen GP-DX mount, auto-guided. The exposure was 36 times 3 min, all the images combined with Iris and post-processed with Photoshop. The camera was unmodified Canon 350D at ISO800, RAW.

Merry Christmas with Pleiades

admin — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 17:42:17 +0000

From time to time I’ll publish some my astrophotos here. And today, for Christmas eve I’d like to present you one of my images.

Pleiades @ Primoz Cigler

Pleiades are stargroup in our local Galaxy, Milky Way. They are approximately 440 ly (light years) distant from us which is “pretty near”. They’re also known as M45 (Messier’s catalogue), Seven Sisters, Seven Stars. In the sky we can find them in the constellation of Taurus. They can be seen by naked eye as a group of seven stars but with indirectly observation we can notice that there is some blue glow around and between them. This blue glow are gasses in the universe which are illuminated by stars in the group.

Pleiades are very frequently target of astrophotographers because they are very beautiful, they cover a huge area in the sky and they are resonably bright comparing to other deep-sky objects.

I took this photo 19th January 2007 with camera Canon 350D and telescope Orion Optics 8″ @ f/4.5. The exposure was 9 times 5 minutes, which were combined and processed with Iris and Photoshop. All the setup was autoguided with SkyWathcer 80/400 and Meade LPI.

I hope that you like the image. You can leave the comment if you do.