ASTRO: M 107

M107/NGC 6171 is a globular cluster one of dozens of globular star
clusters in Ophiuchus. While discovered Mechain who contributed many to
the Messier list this one never made the list until modern times when
this oversight was corrected by adding to the original list.

M107 is unusual in that has regions obscured by dust. The most obvious
is north of center in my image. I couldn't find out if the dust clouds
are in the cluster or just foreground objects. The cluster is more
scattered than most. Some sources put it about 21 million light years
away.

This has been a jinx object for me. Seeing this low in my sky has been
a major issue every time I tried. This time clouds were a problem.
Atmospheric dispersion this low is another problem so I went with a pure
RGB image to tighten up the stars. I used these to make a pseudo
luminosity image after aligning them to remove the prism displacement by
our atmosphere. Unfortunately severe clouds got in the way, especially
with the blue frames. Even though taken highest in the sky the blue and
green signals were severely damaged by clouds. Blue far more than
green. I was able to salvage 2 of 5 frames of each color. While the
green frames used were not though clouds the two blue ones were rather
badly obscured. The color data is rather suspect because of this. I
used 4 blue frames to make the pseudo luminosity image but only two in
the color data. Thus adding the color frames comes up two short of the
pseudo luminance frame.

Last March, 2011 image. On to April! No longer am I 15 months behind,
only 14. Weather then started turning against me. I hope to catch up
somewhat in the next month or two.

14" LX200R @ f10, Pseudo L=11x10', R=5x10' GB=2x10', STL-11000XM,
Paramount ME

Rick
--
Prefix is correct. Domain is arvig dot net

Rick,

detail is very good for such a southern object.

Stefan

"Rick Johnson" schrieb im Newsbeitrag
. com...
M107/NGC 6171 is a globular cluster one of dozens of globular star
clusters in Ophiuchus. While discovered Mechain who contributed many to
the Messier list this one never made the list until modern times when
this oversight was corrected by adding to the original list.

M107 is unusual in that has regions obscured by dust. The most obvious
is north of center in my image. I couldn't find out if the dust clouds
are in the cluster or just foreground objects. The cluster is more
scattered than most. Some sources put it about 21 million light years
away.

This has been a jinx object for me. Seeing this low in my sky has been
a major issue every time I tried. This time clouds were a problem.
Atmospheric dispersion this low is another problem so I went with a pure
RGB image to tighten up the stars. I used these to make a pseudo
luminosity image after aligning them to remove the prism displacement by
our atmosphere. Unfortunately severe clouds got in the way, especially
with the blue frames. Even though taken highest in the sky the blue and
green signals were severely damaged by clouds. Blue far more than
green. I was able to salvage 2 of 5 frames of each color. While the
green frames used were not though clouds the two blue ones were rather
badly obscured. The color data is rather suspect because of this. I
used 4 blue frames to make the pseudo luminosity image but only two in
the color data. Thus adding the color frames comes up two short of the
pseudo luminance frame.

Last March, 2011 image. On to April! No longer am I 15 months behind,
only 14. Weather then started turning against me. I hope to catch up
somewhat in the next month or two.

14" LX200R @ f10, Pseudo L=11x10', R=5x10' GB=2x10', STL-11000XM,
Paramount ME

Rick
--
Prefix is correct. Domain is arvig dot net

Make that about 21 THOUSAND light years. Too used to galactic
distances. At least that's my excuse.

Rick

On 6/8/2012 2:33 AM, Rick Johnson wrote:
M107/NGC 6171 is a globular cluster one of dozens of globular star
clusters in Ophiuchus. While discovered Mechain who contributed many to
the Messier list this one never made the list until modern times when
this oversight was corrected by adding to the original list.

M107 is unusual in that has regions obscured by dust. The most obvious
is north of center in my image. I couldn't find out if the dust clouds
are in the cluster or just foreground objects. The cluster is more
scattered than most. Some sources put it about 21 million light years away.

This has been a jinx object for me. Seeing this low in my sky has been a
major issue every time I tried. This time clouds were a problem.
Atmospheric dispersion this low is another problem so I went with a pure
RGB image to tighten up the stars. I used these to make a pseudo
luminosity image after aligning them to remove the prism displacement by
our atmosphere. Unfortunately severe clouds got in the way, especially
with the blue frames. Even though taken highest in the sky the blue and
green signals were severely damaged by clouds. Blue far more than green.
I was able to salvage 2 of 5 frames of each color. While the green
frames used were not though clouds the two blue ones were rather badly
obscured. The color data is rather suspect because of this. I used 4
blue frames to make the pseudo luminosity image but only two in the
color data. Thus adding the color frames comes up two short of the
pseudo luminance frame.

Last March, 2011 image. On to April! No longer am I 15 months behind,
only 14. Weather then started turning against me. I hope to catch up
somewhat in the next month or two.

14" LX200R @ f10, Pseudo L=11x10', R=5x10' GB=2x10', STL-11000XM,
Paramount ME

Rick


--
Prefix is correct. Domain is arvig dot net

Thick gunk stabilized the air so it was possible. Normally stars at
this altitude are fuzzy balls. The L image I tried was slightly
elongated from dispersion. After seeing it I gave up on trying for any
L data. Fortunately clusters work rather well with only RGB data.

Rick

On 6/8/2012 5:08 PM, Stefan Lilge wrote:
Rick,

detail is very good for such a southern object.

Stefan

"Rick schrieb im Newsbeitrag
. com...
M107/NGC 6171 is a globular cluster one of dozens of globular star
clusters in Ophiuchus. While discovered Mechain who contributed many to
the Messier list this one never made the list until modern times when
this oversight was corrected by adding to the original list.

M107 is unusual in that has regions obscured by dust. The most obvious
is north of center in my image. I couldn't find out if the dust clouds
are in the cluster or just foreground objects. The cluster is more
scattered than most. Some sources put it about 21 million light years
away.

This has been a jinx object for me. Seeing this low in my sky has been
a major issue every time I tried. This time clouds were a problem.
Atmospheric dispersion this low is another problem so I went with a pure
RGB image to tighten up the stars. I used these to make a pseudo
luminosity image after aligning them to remove the prism displacement by
our atmosphere. Unfortunately severe clouds got in the way, especially
with the blue frames. Even though taken highest in the sky the blue and
green signals were severely damaged by clouds. Blue far more than
green. I was able to salvage 2 of 5 frames of each color. While the
green frames used were not though clouds the two blue ones were rather
badly obscured. The color data is rather suspect because of this. I
used 4 blue frames to make the pseudo luminosity image but only two in
the color data. Thus adding the color frames comes up two short of the
pseudo luminance frame.

Last March, 2011 image. On to April! No longer am I 15 months behind,
only 14. Weather then started turning against me. I hope to catch up
somewhat in the next month or two.

14" LX200R @ f10, Pseudo L=11x10', R=5x10' GB=2x10', STL-11000XM,
Paramount ME

Rick
--
Prefix is correct. Domain is arvig dot net