M13 was still pretty low when I shot this last night, but I couldn't resist the urge to capture it. It's a great globular with terrific detail when viewed through large scopes.
The little smudge at bottom left is NGC6207, a spiral galaxy about 45 million light years away. (Shan't be visiting there anytime soon!)
Image Details:
- Imaging Scope: Astrotelescopes 80mm ED Refractor
- Imaging Camera: Nikon D7000
- Guiding Scope: William Optics 66mm Petzval Refractor
- Guiding Camera: Meade DSI-C
- Mount: Celestron CGEM
- Exposures: 7 * 7 minute lights, 5 * 7 minute darks
- ISO 640
- Aligned and Stacked in Deep Sky Stacker
- Post-Processing in GIMP (contrast, saturation and unsharp mask)
- Noise Reduction in NeatImage
6 comments:
Hi Phil! Hope all is going well? I just thought you'd like to know that your fantastic image of Messier 13 is featured (along with this blog post)over on Portal to the Universe—http://www.portaltotheuniverse.org/
The link to your blog post was also featured on twitter. So I dare say your will receive a fair few hits :)
Keep up the great work,
Ewan
G'day Ewan! Long time no hear from (except FLICKR I suppose). Doing great, mate. New job, more time to do some astro stuff, having fun with the family. I hope all is well with you, too.
Very cool about the extra publicity! I think the image is so-so but glad you think otherwise! I'm pushing it a bit shooting such objects through an 80mm scope. With a DSLR it makes for a very wide field of view. The Nikon D7000's 16 megapixels makes it relatively easy to crop at 100% and still get decent results on more distant objects. I'd like to get some bigger glass soon, though.
Thanks again!
Cheers,
Phil
Very nice, Phil! That is a really fun target. Good focus and detail on the stars, too.
Thanks, Rory! I love Globs. Hope to image a few more over the summer.
Very nice, Phil! This is an excellent, well-balanced image. Nicely framed, nice star-shapes, nice color. In fact, I was looking at M13 last night through a 15" dob, and it looked about like this! Well, you've maybe gone a bit deeper than my eyes did through the 15". Congrats on this. I hope mine turns out as well next time I turn a camera on M13 (again).
Val
Thanks, Val! Actually you have reminded me to get my 12" Dob out soon as the glob come into view.
This is a decent image given it was taken with an 80mm scope. My DSLR has a great ability to still get a great 100% crop (16 megapixels).
I am starting to wonder how well I would do with a bigger scope...
Cheers,
Phil
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