Spring 2006 Photo Gallery

This was our first crew of intrepid photographers from Astro 8. The project was a hit! And I'm looking forward to extending the project for all later semesters. All of the shots below were taken with the ST2000XCM CCD camera hooked up at prime focus to the Megrez 80mm f/6 APO refractor, from Cabrillo Observatory. All processing began with CCDOPS5: dark-subtracted, flat fielded, and single-shot colored with sRGB+gamma. Stacking was done using "classic" in Registax 3. Cabrillo Observatory is not a particularly dark site, and the total integration times are limited to ~15 minutes in order to get the whole class through the process during the semester. Imagine what you could do with an hour long shot at a dark site. Or better yet - take Astro 9 and you'll find out.

 

The Runnning Man Nebula: Neta and Gia wanted to capture the "Running Man Nebula", but the Orion Nebula nearby was dazzlingly close, and kinda hogged the composition here. 3x5min

Open Cluster M41 in Canis Major: Mar 22, 2006 3x5min stack. Curved, cropped, unsharp masked in Photoshop.M41 was our least spectacular subject. And clouds drifting across the edge of the frame at an altitude of only 13 degrees didn't help either.

 

The Rosette Nebula: 4x5min stack. Mike got this image of the Rosette on on Apr 19. Post-processed in Photoshop: levels, brightness/contrast cropped. Note the satellite that crossed the field.

M51 in Canes Venatici: Scott got this image of the Whirlpool Galaxy from Cabrillo Observatory. A stack of 2x5min exposures with the Megrez. Processed in Photoshop: levels, brightness/contrast, cropped.

The Sombrero Galaxy: Scott also got this 2x5min stack of thean edge-on spiral in Corvus, with the same setup and processing as for the Whirlpool.