NGC 6752 A GLOBULAR CLUSTER SKETCH.

21 June 2017.

NGC 6752.

NGC 6752 is a globular cluster located in the constellation Pavo. It is at an estimated distance of 13 000 light years from Earth and 17 000 light years from the galactic center.
It is listed at an apparent magnitude of 5.4 and is estimated to be 11.78 Billion years old.

Here is a Stellerium screenshot showing it's location.

I set about observing and also sketching this cluster on the evening of the 21st June 2017.
I had left the scope out for two hours for some cool down time. At about 22H00 I ventured out into the cold winter night dressed warm and armed with my sketch bag, eyepieces and enthusiasm.

Before viewing my intended target for the night I first took in some old friends to help aid in some dark adaption and get some valuable star hopping time in on the dob. Having not used her in a while the skills become rusty. 
What was also nice is that after the sketching session I was able to squeeze in NGC 6720 also known as the Ring Nebula or Messier 57.
Using both a UHC and OIII filter improved the views. I noted a small white/grey ring sitting in space. It appeared almost like a small ring of smoke blown by a smoker. It is very small and does not hold up well to magnification. This is probably due to the fact it is in a part of the sky that sits in the Durban light dome and the sky glow is severe over that way. This was my first ever view of NGC 6720 so that was a nice icing on the cake after the sketching session.

Having done a tour of the southern skies I set about locating NGC 6720. It was a reasonably easy star hop considering most of the stars in that region are not visible to the naked eye.
Once in view I spent another half an hour letting my eye adapt to the image and hopefully take in as many photons as possible. Once I was satisfied with what I was seeing and had planned the sketch out in my mind, I do this by looking for patterns in the stars in the cluster and hopefully try and replicate that on paper, I then began sketching using soft white pastel pencil on A5 black sketching paper.

The sketch took a tad more than a hour to complete.
By this time my dark adaption had grown and with averted vision I was able to see a nice soft diffuse glow emanating from the core and spreading outward. With direct vision I was able to discern a multitude of brighter stars peppering the cluster with many more dusting the spaces in between.
It really does make for a very pleasing cluster to view and sketch. I really would like to view and sketch this GC from my dark site and do a comparison of the views.
I am sure that my light pollution is hiding a great deal more of this lovely cluster. just as it does with the others.

So here are two images, the first is my set up for the night and then the sketch itself.

NGC 5189

NGC 5189

This one has a bit of a spin to it.

This object was brought to my attention by Alan(KT4HX) on AF.net(see the useful links top right).
He posts a a very popular blog there with monthly targets for you to observe, ranging from the easy to difficult.
He posted NGC 5189 in the June edition and I was keen to see if I would be able to crack this one in my light polluted urban backyard.
Usually planetary nebula like these tend to hide from me in the light pollution but I was willing to try.

I set up my dob along with the laptop outside to run Stellerium.
After a hour cool down time for the scope I got out and took in a few old friends first to get my "seeing" eye in.
Once I was comfortable and ready to do some deep sky hunting I took aim at NGC 5189.
The star hop was not too tough and within 10 minutes I was on target.

It presented itself as a small oblong smudge running north to south in my eyepiece view. Trying various filters I found the OIII filter brought out a few brighter patches in the smudge.
I was very pleased at this find and felt a sense of euphoria and elation on the find. It always feels good to do a star hop and find your target, certainly more satisfying than using the goto scope.
In a way this reignited my love affair with the dob and there are many more nights planned for her.

Feeling good I decided to have a go at a sketch of NGC 5189.
So I went in, careful to keep my observing eye shut to preserve my night vision and returned armed with my sketching bag of tricks.

And this was the result of the sketch with the view as seen through the eyepiece with the dob.

I also started playing with the idea of imaging this target. So on the next evening I had the imaging scope out I was ready to shoot.
Set up as follows:

Skywatcher 102 ALT/AZ Synscan goto .
Canon 1200D.
ISO 800.
50 X 25 second light exposures.
50 X 25 second dark exposures.
Stacked with DSS and processed in Star tools.

So this was a interesting target and I got to practice my visual, sketching and short exposure astrophotography skills.
Maybe some night I will point the Mallincam at it for good measure!

Thanks for reading and clear skies!

Comet Johnson C/2015 V2

COMET JOHNSON C/2015 V2.

This comet was also imaged on the night of 17 June 2017 along with comet 71P/Clark.
It is a hyperbolic comet discovered by Jess Johnson on the 3rd November 2015.
Here is a Stellerium screen shot showing it's location for today 20 June 2017.

When I went to process the image I had noticed something fuzzy close to the comet. This as it turns out was a wonderful surprise. I will expand more on that later.

Set up as follows:

Skywatcher 102 ALT/AZ Synscan goto.
Canon 1200D(No mods).
ISO 800.
30 X 25 second light frames.
30 X 25 second dark frames.
Stacked in DSS and processed in Star tools.

This comet is moving into better and better sky for me to observe and image and I hope to revisit this at it's best in my night skies here in the southern hemisphere.
So here is C/2015 V2 (Johnson).

Lot's off dust motes in there that necessitated a cleaning of the sensor after the shoot!

Now for the surprise.
I cropped the image and stretched it some more and to my surprise two objects showed themselves.
After running the image through astrometry.net to find out what I had, I see there are in fact three objects in the image besides the comet!

What I had also caught in the background is NGC 5566, NGC 5569 and NGC 5560.
Although NGC 5569 is barely visible in the image.So those three are a nice added bonus.
NGC 5566 is approximately 65 million light years from us!

Here is a cropped version showing the trio.

And the annotated image.

So that was the fun on my acre of Africa, clear skies friends!

Comet 71P/Clark.

COMET 71P/CLARK.

 I imaged this comet on the evening of the 17th June 2017.

Comet 71P/Clark is currently located in Scorpius.
Here is a screen shot from Stellerium showing its location today 20 June 2017.

Comet 71P/Clark was discovered by Micheal Clark at Mount John university observatory in New Zealand on the 9th June 1973 with a brightness of apparent magnitude 13.
It is a periodic comet with a orbital period of  5.5 years.

Set up was as follows.

Skywatcher 102 ALT/AZ Synscan goto.
Canon 1200D(no mods).
ISO 800
30 X 25 second exposures.
30 X 25 second darks.
Stacked with DSS and processed in Star tools.

I could not pick up this comet visually in the 8" dob and that is why I decided to have a shot at imaging it. Was very pleased to see the comet once I started processing!

And here is Comet 71P/Clark.

Milky way with a DSLR.

Had another attempt at the Milky Way with a DSLR on a static tripod.

This time I chose a wider field of view to incorporate as much of the center of the MW as possible. I was also able to fit Saturn into the image at top left of center.
I also tried a few different techniques in Star tools. So far I am pleased at the result, a bit more artistic license was used in this process.

This image was taken on the night of the 18th June 2017 at about 22H30. Sagittarius was by that time almost at zenith. This is the best time to try capture the MW from my urban backyard setting.
To close to the east and I have too much light pollution and over to my west I have trees and other problems.
The closer to zenith I get the better the image details are and there is slightly less atmosphere to contend with as well.

You need to take several test shots to determine an exposure length. Too long an exposure and you have star trails from the Earths rotation. I determined that the focal length I had set for the camera, 28.0mm, required a 15 second exposure before any star trailing became evident.
You can also use these test images to review your focus.
I was not using a laptop on this occasion and focusing was done using live view on a nice bright star.

Once I had all the prep work done it was down to business.

Canon 1200D.
18-55mm kit lens set to 28.0mm.
ISO 1600.
White balance mode set to Daylight.
AV 5.6
Taken in portrait mode.

18 Light frames at 15 seconds each.
18 Dark frames at 15 seconds each.
Stacked with deep sky stacker and processed in star tools.

Thanks for reading, comments etc. are always welcomed.
Clear skies friends!

Milky way wide field DSLR imaging.

June 7th 2017.

Milky way wide field imaging with a DSLR.

This image was taken with a near full moon. It's a spread of the center of the milky way showing NGC 6523 also known as the Lagoon Nebula(M8) along with NGC 6514 also known as the Trifid Nebula(M20) and also showing very prominently is NGC 6475(M7).
The image is 15.4 X 7.51 Degrees with a Pixel scale of 22.9 arcsec/pixel.
The center of the image is at (RA,DMS) -28⁰ 58'   14.023"

Image was taken on a static tripod and a Canon 1200D(no mods).
ISO 1600
102 X 5 second light frames.
18 X 5 second dark frames.
The lens used was a 75-300 mm set at 75mm.

I attempted to capture Saturn in the image but due to the amount of light frames it moved out of the field of view and I had to crop it from the stacked image. It was sitting on the border of the image where the frames start to overlap.

All frames stacked in DSS(deep sky stacker) and processed in Star tools and downsized for the web in photoshop.

So here it is,

 There is a rather crowded annotated image if you like.

So that was the fun from my acre of Africa. until next time friends...