NGC 1184 The evening of October 10 had bad transparency,
so I decided to do an allnighter on the rather bright galaxy NGC
1184 in Cepheus. I only used the images of the last part of the
night as seeing got better after midnight. Taken from the middle
of Berlin with an 8" SCT at f/6.3, SXV-H9 camera, 110x2 minutes.
NGC 1343 is a galaxy on the border between Cassiopeia
and Camelopardalis. It features a ring-shaped core that looks rather
like a planetary nebula, the halo is a barred spiral. Taken from
the middle of Berlin with a 10" Skywatcher Newton at f/4.8,
SXV-H9 camera, 70x2 minutes.
NGC 1530 in Camelopardalis is at +75 degrees declination
so I couldn't reach it with my LX200 as the CCD camera would hit
the fork mount's base at anything higher than about 65 degrees.
This time I used my 10" Dobson on an EQ6-Skyscan mount. Taken
from the middle of Berlin with a 10" Newton at f/4.7, SXV-H9
camera, 240x2 minutes.
NGC 1560 in Camelopardalis is rather large (10
arcminutes) but also rather faint. At least it doesn't have a bright
nucleus that could pose problems for image processing. Taken from
the middle of Berlin with an 8" SCT at f/6.3, SXV-H9 camera,
145x3 minutes.
NGC 1569 Seeing was good in the night of 8 October,
at least near the zenith where NGC 1569 in Camelopardalis was at
that time. The inner part of the galaxy is very bright, so I had
to do a strong logarithmic stretch in order to show the halo without
burning in the central parts. Taken from the middle of Berlin with
an 8" SCT at f/6.3, SXV-H9 camera, 54x3 minutes.
NGC 1961 in Camelopardalis is one of the most interesting
objects I have encountered recently. It certainly looks strange.
I gathered the data in two nights at the end of October. Taken from
the middle of Berlin with an 8" SCT at f/7, SXV-H9 camera,
185x2 minutes.
NGC 2146 I needed three nights to get enough data
for NGC 2146 in Camelopardalis as all of these nights were cut short
by clouds. Taken from the middle of Berlin with an 8" SCT at
f/6.3, SXV-H9 camera, 73x5 minutes.
NGC 2276 et al. NGC 2276 had a Supernova (SN 2005dl)
a while ago. The SN is the star directly to the left of the core
of NGC 2276 (the structured galaxy near the bright star). The galaxy
to the left is NGC 2300, which has a large halo that I would guestimate
to about 7-8 arcminutes. I would have needed a darker sky to show
it more clearly. The edge on on the right is UGC 3361. I have imaged
this field earlier this year with my 10" Newton but the image
was marred by strong coma because I didn't check collimation. So
Ireshot this field with my C8, just to make sure that the same error
didn't happen again. The old picture can still be found at http://www.mysky.org/mysky/?article_get=1&article=1:23959
The Newton sure gives a brighter picture and seeing also seems to
have been better for the old picture. Taken from the middle of Berlin
with an 8" SCT at f/7, SX-H9 camera, 90x3 minutes.
IC 334 is a faint galaxy in Camelopardalis. An
even stronger logarithmic stretch shows some streamers that emerge
from this galaxy. Taken from the middle of Berlin with an 8"
SCT at f/7, SXV-H9 camera, 134x2 minutes.
This is the contrast enhanced version of my IC
334 picture. At first look I thought that I had a problem with my
flatfield, but a check in the DSS confirmed that the streamers are
real. Taken from the middle of Berlin with an 8" SCT at f/7,
SXV-H9 camera, 134x2 minutes.
IC 342: I recently got myself an EQ6 Skyscan mount
for visual use but of course the first thing I did was to mount
my 10" Dobson on the EQ6 and try some imaging ;-) As the periodic
error is quite large (+/- 21 arcseconds) I decided to image near
the celestial pole as obviously the guiding accuracy is less important
there. The Newt gives much brighter pictures than my 8" SCT,
so I decided to do 2 minute subexposures; with a background level
of about 12000 counts there are no problems with readout noise even
in these shorter than usual subexposures. IC 342 is a good match
for the FOV of this setup. Taken from the middle of Berlin with
a 10" Skywatcher Newton at f/4.8, SXV-H9 camera, 219x2 minutes.
IC 356 (galaxy in Camelopardalis) IC 356 is a tough
target from the city, it has a nice spiral structure but the single
raw frames didn't show anything except the core. I had to do a very
strong logarithmic stretch to show the fainter areas and could only
do minimal sharpening because of the bad S/N ratio. Taken from the
middle of Berlin with an 8" SCT at f/7, SXV-H9 camera, 25x5
minutes and 72x2 minutes.
IC 391 is a nice little galaxy in Camelopardalis.
It is quite bright, so I used only the first third of my frames
as seeing got worse in the course of the night. Taken from the middle
of Berlin with an 8" SCT at f/6.3, SXV-H9 camera, 32x3 minutes.
