Despite the lack of activity here I have been busy collecting images at every opportunity. Following on with my theme of dark, dusty nebulae I spent a long time in September 2019 acquiring frames for an image of vdB152. The final count for RGB frames was 28 hours across the three colours.
vdB152 is a reflection nebula in Cepheus.
This image was published in Astronomy Now, December 2019.
I’ve started a new gallery to display the pictures from my 2019 visit to Tivoli in Namibia. I’ll add to this as I complete processing of the images.
After 2 clear weekends in a row, the British weather has returned to form and it’s overcast and raining again.
While I was perusing some adverts for telescopes (£££), Ann reminded me that there are telescopes available for rent on the Internet. Some rifling through old magazines followed and soon threw up the site; http://www.global-rent-a-scope.com (GRAS) run by Arnie Rosner. Some very expensive telescopes are sited under dark clear skies in Southern Australia and New Mexico and you can control them remotely from the comfort of your own home. What’s more, they even offer a free trial.
Here’s the first result, NGC 1566 in the constellation Dorado:
The free trial telescope is an impressive setup with an SBIG ST-2000XMC single shot colour camera on a Takahashi Sky 90 refractor and this is a 10 minute exposure. The resultant image is then automatically processed and emailed to you. The website even shows you a list of what’s in the sky at the time and all you have to do is decide what you want to photograph.
I’ll post the remaining trial images later.