ASTRO: M-77, Spiral Galaxy in Cetus

I've been too busy to do much imaging for most of the winter, but here's a
picture of M-77 that I took back in November on a pretty poor night. The
image was taken with an STL-1301E CCD camera working thru an Optical
Guidance Systems 20-inch F/8.1 RC Cassegrain. The field of view is about
12x16 arc minutes with north at the top. M-77 is a difficult target and I'll
have to go back and get more exposure on a good night.

For more info on this interesting Seyfert galaxy, see:
http://www.kopernik.org/images/archive/m77.htm

George N

George Normandin wrote:
I've been too busy to do much imaging for most of the winter, but here's a
picture of M-77 that I took back in November on a pretty poor night. The
image was taken with an STL-1301E CCD camera working thru an Optical
Guidance Systems 20-inch F/8.1 RC Cassegrain. The field of view is about
12x16 arc minutes with north at the top. M-77 is a difficult target and I'll
have to go back and get more exposure on a good night.

For more info on this interesting Seyfert galaxy, see:
http://www.kopernik.org/images/archive/m77.htm

George N


Welcome back. I thought that last snow storm buried you alive.
Looks like a pretty good night to me, my seeing is much worse when I go
back and look at the stars in my image of M77. I see the same red
color toward the nucleus I had but you've got a lot better signal on the
outer arms. Any exposure data?

Finally had a good night here. I have some good data on M101 if I can
find time to work on it. Problem with being a retired tax CPA is you
can't shake clients you've had for 40 years. So up to my neck in
returns here the last few weeks. Hope to dig my way clear by 3rd
quarter moon and get back to imaging (if the weather ever permits) and
processing some of the stuff I took that night.

Rick

Looks very good to me George. Nice processing with both the bright core and
the faint halo showing well.

Stefan

"George Normandin" schrieb im Newsbeitrag
...
I've been too busy to do much imaging for most of the winter, but here's a
picture of M-77 that I took back in November on a pretty poor night. The
image was taken with an STL-1301E CCD camera working thru an Optical
Guidance Systems 20-inch F/8.1 RC Cassegrain. The field of view is about
12x16 arc minutes with north at the top. M-77 is a difficult target and
I'll have to go back and get more exposure on a good night.

For more info on this interesting Seyfert galaxy, see:
http://www.kopernik.org/images/archive/m77.htm

George N

"Rick Johnson" wrote

Welcome back. I thought that last snow storm buried you alive.

Rick,

What almost buried me was getting stuck in a sleet storm at the Philly
Airport for 30+ hours after a week long business trip to Orlando FL (where
the light pollution is worse than awful!!). What little "astro-time" I've
had has been used for helping with public programs at Kopernik Observatory.
It was just too cold to do any imaging.

Looks like a pretty good night to me, my seeing is much worse when I go
back and look at the stars in my image of M77. I see the same red color
toward the nucleus I had but you've got a lot better signal on the outer
arms. Any exposure data?

I have an old ST-9 image of M-77 that shows more detail, but it was black
& white. With this image the lum was 31 minutes (60 sec subs), plus 5
minutes each on color, binned 2x2. This is the first image in years that I
tried color binning. All-in-all I could have gone three times longer on
this, but again, the seeing was poor.

......Problem with being a retired tax CPA is.......

I hope to have your "retirement problem" sometime later this year! I'll
probably sleep during the day on new moon week!

George N

"Stefan Lilge" wrote
...
Looks very good to me George. Nice processing with both the bright core
and the faint halo showing well.


Stefan,

I failed to get this processed when I tried a few months ago, but I got
it this time. However the exposure was too short to really get the outer
envelope.

George N

George Normandin wrote:

What little "astro-time" I've
had has been used for helping with public programs at Kopernik Observatory.
It was just too cold to do any imaging.

How's the crisis at Kopernik coming, has it eased any?

I have an old ST-9 image of M-77 that shows more detail, but it was black
& white. With this image the lum was 31 minutes (60 sec subs), plus 5
minutes each on color, binned 2x2. This is the first image in years that I
tried color binning. All-in-all I could have gone three times longer on
this, but again, the seeing was poor.

Your faint arms have a much better noise level and detail than mine yet
I used 50 minutes of data of 5 minute subs binned 2x2 so pixel size
would be about the same. Your stars are much tighter than mine but I
got more detail in the core. I still don't understand this mode.

Rick