Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Hercules (Her)  ·  Contains:  HD156873  ·  M 92  ·  NGC 6341  ·  PGC 2220717  ·  PGC 2221593  ·  PGC 59984
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M92 - Second light for mono camera, Ian Dixon
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M92 - Second light for mono camera

Revision title: version h

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
M92 - Second light for mono camera, Ian Dixon
Powered byPixInsight

M92 - Second light for mono camera

Revision title: version h

Equipment

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Acquisition details

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Description

Hello friends,

Its been a while!  Lots going on with family (all good stuff) and a new (very busy) job, but I'm happy to be gathering light again.  We have had some clouds but mostly smoke for much of the new moon cycles this year.  The forest fires have really taken out much of my usual imaging time. 

This image is essentially a test of my newish 2600mm camera - conclusion - I love it!!  Here I compare a Lum image of M92 with a colour (LRGB) image, using data from my OSC camera. 

Lum highlights - lots of tiny galaxies to the right of the glob.  
Colour highlights - hmm... colour? 

Its new moon so on the weekend I went out and got a few hours time to image 2 messier objects. One of these is M92, a globular cluster in Hercules.   Globs are some of my favourite deep space objects (DSOs) as they are among the oldest objects within our galaxy. I’m sharing an image of this cluster to hopefully convey the excitement.  I tried to get some detail in the core.  I have colour channels as well and will add next weekend.

Details
45 min exposure in Lum and OSC each -  with 3 min subs
Scope – 120 mm Esprit @ 840 mm focal length
Camera – ZWO 2600 mm and 2600 mc
Filter – luminance
Mount – Astrophysics AP900
ASIair controller with wifi connection to my apple tablet..
  • M92 is quite bright and can be seen with the naked eye in dark skies
  • its 26,000 light years (ly) distant
  • Exceptionally old, eg, ~ 12 billion years.
  • Diameter is 100 ly
  • Mass = 330,000 suns
  • Approaching us at 112 km/sec


Thanks for reading this, clear skies to you

Ian

Comments

Revisions

  • M92 - Second light for mono camera, Ian Dixon
    Original
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    M92 - Second light for mono camera, Ian Dixon
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B

Title: OSC colour added

Description: This version is the combination of lum data plus colour data (OSC), all done in Pixinsight. I used some simple tricks to manually aliign and register the images as well as to blend. Pixinsight is quite a good platform for this, I am impressed, as I don't have much practice with mono data.

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C

Title: Camp site - bortle 3-4 area

Description: This gives you an idea of where I go to get out of the light dome of our city. This place is Bortle 4-ish, perhaps even slightly better. The milky way is clearly visible. Its close to home - only 34 km south on an easy road. This time I thought it wise to camp out after imaging (3:30 am and the dawn begins) - grabbing some sleep before going back home (and then to work, ha ha). Its so much better than driving early in the AM. Thanks for looking.

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D

Title: Field flowers at the dark site

Description: Exploring around in the morning revealed this meadow of flowers - about a hectare of them.

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E

Title: Edge of field (beans and wheat this year)

Description: Just a quick image to show you how very flat the country is in Manitoba. If the air is smoke free, there are not many obstructions to getting targets everywhere in the sky.

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F

Title: Reprocessed data with a crop

Description: I wasn't happy with my first couple of iterations of this data.. so I went back and redid it with an emphasis on trying to bring out some of the detail in the core of M92.

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G

Title: Version G

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H

Title: version h

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M92 - Second light for mono camera, Ian Dixon