Messier 1, the Crab Nebula

My Second attempt at imaging the Crab Nebula was much more successful than the first.  This version consists of  20 5-minute subs at ISO-800.  I processed the 32 bit TIFF that Deep Sky Stacker autosaved.  This seemed to produce the best image.  It took several attempts to create this image, but once I discovered the 32 bit processing had a little more control over the beginning steps in the processing, I decided to use it for this image.

An excerpt describing the Crab from Wikipedia:

"The Crab Nebula (catalogue designations M1, NGC 1952, Taurus A) is a supernova remnant and pulsar wind nebula in the constellation of Taurus. The nebula was observed by John Bevis in 1731; it corresponds to a bright supernova recorded by Arab, Chinese and Japanese astronomers in 1054. At X-ray and gamma-ray energies above 30 keV, the Crab is generally the strongest persistent source in the sky, with measured flux extending to above 10¹² eV. Located at a distance of about 6,500 light-years (2 kpc) from Earth, the nebula has a diameter of 11 light years (3.4 pc) and expands at a rate of about 1,500 kilometers per second. It is part of the Perseus Arm of the Milky Way Galaxy."

"At the center of the nebula lies the Crab Pulsar, a neutron star (or spinning ball of neutrons), 28–30 km across,^[5] which emits pulses of radiation from gamma rays to radio waves with a spin rate of 30.2 times per second. The nebula was the first astronomical object identified with a historical supernova explosion."

I successfully imaged the Crab Nebula pulsar.  It is extremely faint, but according to what I've read, this next image points to it...

The pulsar is hard to see, but it is there in both images.  It is the extremely small star to the right and below a brighter star.
These images were taken with a 6" Newtonian Reflector and a Canon 300D DSLR.

Orion Awesome Autoguider First Light

Received my Orion Awesome Autoguider a week ago, but last night was the first clear night to try it out.  I must say, the name lives up to its performance.  Although the mini guider probably would have been adequate for my small setup, for the small amount more money, I figured I would just get the full size scope, in case I would ever upgrade the imaging scope.

My first image taken using the guide scope was of M33.  The guider was able to lock on some pretty dim stars, I believe to be dimmer than 7th magnitude.I had 3 to pick from in the field of the guide scope.  I did not have to re-aim the guidescope whatsoever, on 4 different objects. 

This is an image of the complete setup in operation.  As you can see, the wiring setup has doubled, but the guidescope is permanently connected to the main scope, so the scope assembly is torn down and set up as one piece.  The only additional steps I have to do is hook up the usb to the camera and the cable going to the guide port on the mount.

Now for a couple images taken with the guidescope and 5 minute exposures.  The first thing I learned after the imaging session was over was that 5 minutes at iso 1600 was too much for the brightness of my sky.  The next set of images that I take will be at iso 800, but of the same duration, hopefully that will bring the background brightness down enough for the stacker to handle the images better.  Using some careful processing, and by also using a bicubic stacking method in deep sky stacker, I was able to generate this quite acceptable version of M33.

I'm not sure if this is my best yet image of this object, but it's got to be close.  I was able to resolve the major emission nebulosity in the galaxy.  This image consists of 19 frames.

The next object I chose to photograph was M77 in Cetus.  This is a composite of only 4 frames.

M77 is in the center. the galaxy at the top is NGC 1055.  NGC 1072 is also in the frame, but it is too small to resolve.  M77 is 7 arc seconds across.  M77 has a really bright core, but if you look closely there is darker nebulosity around the core.  The stars near this object are dim, and are tiny pinpoints which is showing that the guiding worked very nicely.

The next object I imaged was the Pacman Nebula, but I only shot 3 frames.  It does not measure up to the last Pacman I took, but it is an acceptable image.

I believe if I had taken 10 - 15 frames of this, it would have been a VERY good image.

The final image I took was of the Crab Nebula, M1.  This would have been a good image, but somehow, the camera focus got disturbed.  I must have bumped the focuser or something like that.  I was able to enhance it and I got some detail, but it could have been better.

The 2 bright stars in this image, especially the red one above and to the left has a tiny dark hole in the center, indicating the focus was out a bit.  This object might have been better had that star had been a pinpoint.

All of these images were shot using 5 minute subs.  I believe this guider will let me get much more detailed images, and will really shine the next time I get to darker sites.