Mike's Astro Photos

Here’s a photo of the Sombrero Galaxy through the WOFLT98.

Sombrero Galaxy - May 5th, 2010

Here’s a crop at full resolution:

Sombrero Galaxy

I’m still getting the hang of this scope, but check out the difference in zoom and quality with the Sombrero picture take with the SCT.

Photo Details
William Optics FLT98
Canon 20Da DSLR
3 frames @ 2 minutes each
ISO800

Here’s a wide field shot of the galaxy  M88, one of 15 Messier galaxies in Virgo’s cluster of galaxies. Approximately 47 million miles away from Earth, M88 is a spiral galaxy with a highly elliptical orbit. This orbit will lead M88 to the core of the galaxy cluster in another 200-300 million years. There are several other galaxies visible in this picture, including M91 at the top center of the picture.

Messier 88 - April 14th, 2010

Here’s a crop of the galaxy at full resolution

Galaxy M88 - April 14th, 2010

Photo Details
William Optics FLT98 / Celestron CGEM Mount
Canon 20Da DSLR Camera
30 minute exposure 19×2 minute
ISO 800
STV Autoguider
No moon, clear

Here’s a wide field shot of M100, the galaxy in the center of the picture. There are several other galaxies in this picture. Can you see them?

Messier - 100

Here’s a picture of Bode’s Galaxy and the Cigar Galaxy. Some scientists believe these galaxies are close enough to each other that the gravity from M81 (the one of the left)  deformed its neighbor causing star formation to increase by 10 times. The galaxies look pretty close to each other but are actually separated by 130,000 light-years.

M81 & M82 - April 18th, 2010

Here’s a closeup of the galaxy pair.

M81 & M82 - April 18th, 2010

Here is a picture of Messier Object 63 a spectacular spiral galaxy nicknamed the Sun Flower Galaxy.

M63 - February 20th, 2010

Here’s a picture of Messier 84, a galaxy in the constellation Virgo. M84 is in the core of the Virgo Cluster of Galaxies, a part of the sky comprised of approximately 1300 galaxies… Wow. You can see what look to be at least 5 galaxies in this picture. Doing some quick math on this… over 5 billion stars are represented in this small piece of the sky imaged from a backyard telescope.

M84 - A Cluster of Galaxies

Here’s a picture of M82, an irregular galaxy in the constellation Ursa Major. Dubbed the cigar galaxy for its shape, M82 looks like its exploding. Astronomers explain this effect as gas being driven out of the galaxy by particle winds.

M82 Cigar Galaxy - February 13th, 2010

Check out this Hubble photo of M82 to experience the full effect.

Here’s a photo of Bode’s Galaxy, Messier 81 a grand spiral galaxy. M81 is approximately 12 million light years away and home to a super massive black hole. This photo is the processed output of 20×3 minute ISO 800 exposures. I’m still figuring out the best methods for the Deep Sky Stacker software. It seems I’m loosing a bit of color when I stack and things are turning a little gray. Despite the loss of color DSS brought out a good bit of definition in the outer spiral rings.

Bode's Galaxy M81 - February 13th, 2010

Here’s a recent shot of the Sombrero Galaxy from Dec 17th 2009. I’ve been wanting to shoot this guy again since getting my observatory setup but he hasn’t been available. I was up at 4:00 AM one night, ready to call it quits but saw the Sombrero on the goto menu. I extended the session an extra 15 minutes to capture 4×3 minute frames of this spectacular galaxy.

Sombrero Galaxy - December 17th, 2009

Here’s a picture of M101, the famous Pin Wheel Galaxy. This image is a 45 minute exposure containing 9×5 minute sub frames @ ISO800 stacked with DSS.

M101 Pin Wheel Galaxy - January 9th, 2010

I’ve been wanting to shoot a good picture of the Andromeda Galaxy since I got my telescope. Andromeda is the closest galaxy to the Milky Way and a very large target. Its proportionally a little larger than the full moon in the sky (no you can’t really see it with your naked eye, but if you could it would be as big as the moon). Andromeda is a hard target for larger scopes because of its size. Here’s the best picture of Andromeda I’ve been able to do yet. Its a total of 90×2 minute frames (180 minutes!) and it still doesn’t look the way I would expect it to.

Andromeda Galaxy - November 28th, 2009

Here’s a picture of M51 the Whirlpool Galaxy. This picture is the result of 18×5 minute frames – a total exposure time of 90 minutes. I used deep sky stacker to stack the sub frames and remove hot pixels and process the flat fields.  

M51 - Whirlpool Galaxy - December 24th, 2009

Here is a picture of the Triangulum Galaxy aka Messier 33, a spiral galaxy three million light years away. This picture is 20×5 minute sub-frames stacked with flats in Deep Sky Stacker.

M33 The Triangulum Galaxy - December 20th, 2009

Bode's Galaxy May 31, 2009

It may not look like much but this image is the result of about 3 weeks of work and about 1.25 hours of exposure time. The 3 weeks that led up to this image mostly centered around drift alignment and proper / perfect polar alignment. We had plenty of technical snaffus during the period, including shooting for a week at ISO200, bad balance and tracking problems. When all was said and done, I learned a whole lot and finally got a good shot of bode’s galaxy (good for me at least).

M82 First Try - Apr 18, 2009

I took this picture of M82 on Apr 18, 2009, the same night I got the whirlpool galaxy. It was a perfect night all around. I had near perfect polar alignment (bigest factor in taking good pics i’ve learned so far), the lights were out and the sky was very dark and very clear. I had spent most of the night photographing the whirlpool, it was after 2:00 AM and I was like… let me try and get one more object. On a whim, I set the goto to M82. The galaxy was perfectly framed in my eye piece so I took a few snaps (20 at 1-2 minutes each). I’m pretty happy with the results.