Astronomy Log

My good friend Mick Jenkins has just purchased a new QHY IMG132E camera from Modern Astronomy, and he has had a really good first night with the QHY IMG132E camera.

Mick has a Meade LX200 8″ telescope and was previously using a Celestron NexImage for lunar and planetary imaging.

Mick was stated as saying “I am very impressed with the image quality of the camera, the colour range, tonal range and sharpness. Jupiter shows Io and its shadow on the cloud tops and greater detail in the bands. All the Moon photos have a greater tonal range and detail compared with the webcam, the Cassini image was taken at 1200 x 1000 at 27 fps 600 frames”.

He went on to say “It wasn’t a particularly good night with some high cloud and I had to load the software and learn the new software, there are a lot more controls than the webcam, this QHY IMG132E has a lot of potential and I am looking forward to imaging Saturn and Mars”.

So he was very impressed with it, which makes me wonder if I should get one as well. I currently have an Imaging Source DMK21 mono, which is great for lunar and solar imaging, but it’s a pain having to change the filters to get a colour planetary image, so I may go for a colour camera next time, plus the DMK21 640×480 size is a bit small sometimes, so a bigger chip like the one on the QHY IMG132E would be better.

But let’s look at the images:

All images by Mick Jenkins 2012

If you are looking for an easy to use star atlas then this is the only one you will need. It is so clearly laid out and easy to use it’s incredible. I can’t rate it highly enough.

Some people may prefer laminated pages, so they can be wiped clean, these are not. But this Star Atlas was designed for outdoor use though, it is spiral bound making it really easy to open out and turn back on its self.

The Cambridge Star Atlas contains a really good lunar map as well. The lunar features in the book are displayed in alphabetical order and in numerical order as they appear on the moon’s surface. The moon maps are also shown in mirror reversed order, as you would view it through an eyepiece.

The constellations are then shown for both the northern and southern latitudes across the various seasons. From here you then drill down into closer views of the constellations, which have page numbers watermarked on them, this denotes which page to jump to in order to see that part of the sky in full detail.

This star atlas also contains a handy list of the Messier objects, a list of the 96 brightest stars and also a list of the constellations.
At the rear of the book there are a number of pages showing all sky maps, the first one shows the constellations, then a distribution of open clusters, globular clusters, diffuse nebula, planetary nebulae and the distribution of galaxies.

The final table in the book contains a list of Exoplanets or extrasolar planets.

Overall this is a brilliant book, if you are looking for a Star Atlas or if you are bored of looking at a planetarium program on a computer screen to find your way around the night sky then buy this book, you won’t regret it.

Cambridge Star Atlas is available to buy now from Amazon.

This image of M31 the Andromeda Galaxy is usually seen as quite an easy target to image, especially for beginners like me. The main problem with it, is that it has a very bright core, but using DPP in Maxim soon sorted this out.

M31, Andromeda Galaxy was imaged using my Skywatcher 80mm ED-Pro telescope and guided with the attached 9×50 finderscope using a QHY5 camera all mounted on an EQ6 mount.

I took L,R,G,B images through Astronomik 1.25″ filters, the camera used was an Atik 314L+

Lx13,Rx10,Gx8,Bx10 all for 300 seconds (5 minutes).

Once they had been calibrated and aligned in Maxim DL, I used a DPP filter with a custom cutoff of something like 50%. I then used FITS Liberator to convert and stretch into TIFF files. Then imported into Photoshop and used curves, levels, high pass filters and various other filters to remove dust and speckles etc.

After doing some deep sky imaging I turned the scope onto Jupiter again and did some quick imaging through the 120ED with the Televue 2x Powermate and DMK21 camera. Small image, but I like to see the detail.

Last year after BBC Stargazing Live one of the most popular items was the Philips Planisphere, which Jonathan Ross used on the show to find the stars in the sky.

The Planisphere is the perfect tool for any amateur astronomer. It comes with full instructions on its use, so you can have a quick look at it and be out inspecting the night sky in only a few minutes.

The planisphere also explains how to find the major planets (Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn), sunrise and sunset as well as the positions of the constellations, season by season. Luckily, many of these instructions can be found on the back of the Planisphere itself (along with a Key to map symbols) so that you can always flip it over if you get stuck.

The Planisphere itself is sturdy, flexible and laminated so it won’t be affected by wet surfaces – which is useful if you find yourself outside and there’s a change in the weather. This makes it superior to any cardboard version.

Buy the Philip’s Planisphere from Amazon, makes a perfect Astronomy Gift for someone who wants to learn the night sky.

Philip’s Planisphere for British Isles, Northern Europe Northern USA and Canada

It’s been a while since I imaged Jupiter, and I have never imaged it since I got my Skywatcher 120mm ED refractor.

This was taken with a mono DMK21 camera and stacked in Registax 6. It was taken using a Televue 2.5x Powermate. I did try a 5x Powermate but the image was too blurry even once stacked and sharpened using wavelets.

It’s a small Jupiter, but perfectly formed!

After FocusMax not working as it should after I installed ASCOM v6 and the latest FocusMax version, FocusMax v3.4.0 now works perfectly tonight.

All I did was remove ASCOM v6 and put v5 on, then tried lots of different FocusMax versions – still no joy. I then decided it could not be ASCOM, so put v6 back on again. I then re-installed FocusMax v3.4.0 and now its fine tonight, although it did not work the other day. My PC must have a mind of its own or the pixies have been working overtime in the observatory at night.

IC 5146 (also known as Caldwell 19, Sh 2-125, and the Cocoon Nebula) is a reflection emission nebula in the constellation of Cygnus.

This image was taken using my 120ED refractor, with my William Optics 0.8x flattener and Atik 314L+ CCD camera, cooled to -10 degrees. I used my Astronomik LRGB filters. The luminance layer was taken using a Hydrogen Alpha (Ha) filter and I took 7 frames of 10mins each, and then did R,G,B – 7 frames binned for 5 mins each.

I spent about 2hours in Photoshop on it, but still not really happy with it, it’s not as sharp as I would have liked, and I think the stars are a bit bloated. I did try some tricks to reduce the star bloat but they did not make too much difference. It’s all a learning curve!

After the easy upgrade to ASCOM v6 and the install of the latest FocusMax it now turns out that it does not work anymore.

The thing is now I don’t have a copy of ASCOM 5.5 anymore and I can’t fine a copy online either. I do have ASCOM v5.0 as that may be worth a try.

The thing is all I did was upgrade ASCOM and install the latest FocusMax and now FM won’t create a V-curve when setting up the ‘First Light Wizard’. I can’t even get it to work by using the ASCOM simulator. I think I need to get back to the Yahoo FocusMax Group and ask them a few more questions.

I have been thinking about just using the in-built focus functionality in Maxim DL, as it seems similar. The worse thing is you cannot try to fix it and test it all out unless it’s a clear night, but you don’t want to be messing about trying to fix things – you want to be imaging or observing.

I submitted the Harvest Moon image I took to AstronomyNow magazine (blog post here – http://www.astronomylog.co.uk/2011/09/15/harvest-full-moon/) and I am lucky enough to have had it published.

Click on the image opposite to enlarge it or view the PDF version here.

My image is at the rear of the magazine in the ‘photo gallery’ section of Astronomy Now magazine (Astronomy Now Magazine, November 2011 edition), I am lucky enough to have had a few of my images on the TV (Stargazing Live, Look East, Anglia TV) but never in a magazine.

It’s funny as this is the 1st photo I have ever sent to Astronomy Now and it got published. I just need to get in Sky at Night magazine and on the Sky at Night TV program and then I have cracked it!

It’s also seems the images that are easy to take seem to come out the best. I think I will try and send AstronomyNow magazine an image more regularly now.

You can subscribe to AstronomyNow magazine and a lots more astronomy magazines here.