NGC 7814 - The Little Sombrero Galaxy - TEC 140
NGC 7814 is an edge-on spiral galaxy 40 million light-years away in the constellation of Pegasus. IT is nicknamed "The Little Sombrero" because of its likeness to The Sombrero Galaxy M104 in Virgo. Close examination of the picture reveals many tiny galaxies, up to a billion light years away in the depths of The Universe.
The dust lanes of the edge-on spiral arms can be easily seen.
Image Technical Data
NGC 7814 is very remote and so needs a long integration (exposure) time. This image was captured from my backyard observatory in Nottingham, UK over the course of three nights in October 2019 (a very wet period in the UK and the capture nights were 2,17 and 24). It took significant dedication to capture the subframes for this image given the dreary weather circumstances and I nearly gave up on several occasions! I used my TEC 140 refractor with Atik 460 cooled CCD camera with Astrodon E Series Generation 2 filters on my OAG guided MESU 200 mount.
Integration is a total of nine hours comprised of:
Luminance > 22 x 900s binned 1x1 ; Red > 17 x 300s 2x2 ; Green > 14 x 300s 2x2 ; Blue > 14 x 300s 2x2
Image capture in Sequence Generator Pro and processing in PixInsight and Photoshop CC. The bright star to the top centre is very difficult to control. This star is of course a foreground star in our own galaxy and is millions of times nearer to the Earth than the galaxy.
M38 - Open Cluster in Auriga TEC 140
M38 is the third of three Messier Open Clusters in the constellation of Auriga, in the Northern hemisphere of the sky. The other two Messier clusters are M36 and M37. All of them are easily visible with binoculars and are seen as faint smudges against the darker background. If you read my post on the Constellation of Auriga you will see all three of the Open Clusters in the same image
Image Technical Data
Imaged from my back yard in Nottingham, UK on the 18th January 2020 whilst high overhead from my location. I used my TEC 140 refractor with Atik 460 cooled CCD camera and Astrodon RGB E Series Generation 2 filters. I used my MESU 200 mount guided with OAG.
All exposures binned 1x1: Red > 12 x 180s ; Green > 14 x 180s ; Blue > 13 x 180s. This gives a total integration time of just under two hours.
M39 Open Cluster in Cygnus - TEC140 refractor
M39 is an open cluster, about 1100 light years distant, in the constellation of Cygnus, The Swan. M39 is about 30 arc minutes in diameter, about the width of the full moon. The Cygnus constellation abounds in interesting objects and The Milky Way galaxy flows straight through it.
ImageTechnical Data
Imaged from my backyard in Nottingham, UK on the 16th October 2019 when it was high overhead from my location. I used my TEC 140 refractor and Atik 460 cooled CCD camera with Astrodon RGB E Series Generation 2 filters. I used my MESU 200 mount guided with an off-Axis guider.
All exposures binned 1x1:
Red > 15 x 120s ; Green > 12 x 120s ; Blue > 15 x 120s
I hope you like it! :)