Gene's Astropics
NGC4676A/B
39x90 (5/19/2003) + 31x75 (4/27/2003) + 40x75 (4/1/2003)
for a total of 147 minutes to see if I could get past my mag3 skies.
Coregistered and summed IRIS
See below for individual image details.
Right image is a cropped part of a DSS-II image
5/19/2003 NGC4676A/B
Near the zenith so the best I can hope for is better transparency :-(
The black line near the bottom is the track of a hot pixel as the scope
tracked for the hour, roughly 1 arcmin long.
No darks or flats taken but a dark generated by median of 11 of the most
shifted images wrt each other, then min subtracted, clipped at 0 followed by
a multiply to bring the hots back up to saturated.
BTW: The CCD of the Toucam seems to have degraded, the hot pixel of the track
is there all the time irregardless of temp, after never being there for a year
:-(
5/4/2003
My timing was not perfect, project pluto shows I missed by 21 minutes
but I measure only 5-6 minutes off to the dark central spot but did not even
know it was to happen, attached the cam and there it was.
Jupiter GRS meridian transit that is :-)
Jupiter
Part of the IO transit from 5/3/2003
21:46/21:55/22:05/22:49 EDT then the seeing deteriorated even more
and the treeline jumped up to obscure the view. 10inch @ F20 w/barlow,
ToUCam.
04/27/2003
10inch F10 @ F20 then 1.5X scaled, ToUCam, best 182 of 442, Registax
and PP6 processed. Captured before end of civil twilight (20:12 EDT) then
seeing went to heck as everything kept cooling down.
04/27/2003
NGC4676 - a little more tail
Just a little more curly tail. Clear but not the most transparent skies.
10inch lx200 F10 @ F3, ToUCam SC1.5 cooled
31x75seconds unguided
AV captured, IRIS + PP processed 15 pseudo darks median averaged
04/03/2003
NGC 4676 - First try
It cleared long enough to catch a glimpse of them.
Transparency - variable 2-4/10 (pretty bad night but better than clouds!!!)
Seeing about 3/10
45x75sec cooled ToUCam SC1.5, cam at end ~ -15C
10inch lx200 F10 @ F3 cropped then 2X resize
Did not get a chance for a dark+flat (cloudy right after the run) so used
a median on the raws which causes the slight light ghosting to the right.
Background over the hour went from 265 to 216 (IRIS BG) as it climbed from
the murk and the high thin clouds moved out (only to be replaced by big thick
ones :(
Captured in AV scripting, proceesed in IRIS and tweaked/cropped in PP6.
Just better than mag18
All images and text copyright 2003 by the author, all rights reserved.
