Happy with this! This is a great globular cluster in the Sagittarius region. Easily viewable with even small scopes, but with larger scopes that have good resolving power, this object is quite a treat.
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: 4 * 4 minute lights, dark and bias frames
•ISO 800
•Aligned and Stacked in Deep Sky Stacker
•Post-Processing in GIMP (contrast, saturation, curves and unsharp mask)
•Noise Reduction in NeatImage (Filter and Sharpen)
5 comments:
Excellent, Phil! The color and contrast are nicely done, and the great glob nicely captured. After Omega Centauri, this one is my favorite. --Val
Thanks, Val. Twas an odd night. My main target was M8, which turned out to be horribly overexposed. The M22 series was just a test run, but came out to be the better shot overall. Weird, it always works like that for me.
Cheers,
Phil
This is fantastic! I am slowly starting to look for a good beginner telescope for my nine-year-old daughter... I don't necessarily want to go "cheap" but still keeping in mind she's new at this...any suggestions? Or do you just do cameras;)?
She's (my daughter) also a beginning environmentalist:
http://masqueradingscientist.blogspot.com/
Thanks for any help!
Thanks, Dorian!
I HIGHLY recommend a 6" Dobsonian scope to get started. Here's why:
1. Cheap! You get a big scope, capable of showing you many great objects, for very little money (about $240 from Orion Telescopes). You are paying for the main tube with the mirror at the base, and a cheap but effective mount called a Dobsonian, which is a bit like a lazy-susan type box.
2. It will teach you and your daughter how to find things in the sky manually (with a decent star chart). This is a much better initial learning experience than an automated scope.
3. A 6" reflector is a great aperture. You will be able to see, very clearly, the rings of Saturn, the cloud bands and moons of Jupiter, superb lunar detail, brighter nebula and great detail in star clusters.
4. It's fairly mobile. You can seperate the scope tube from the base and put it in an average sized car to transport to a dark site without issue.
I have had a 6" Dob for years. I bought mine from Orion for about $240.00 or so, which came with a finder scope and a couple of decent eyepieces. I have other scopes now but I gave my 6" Dob to my kids (8 & 10) and they can find and center objects in the scope pretty easily. They love it.
Good luck!
Cheers,
Phil
That is one of my favorite globulars. Excellent work, Phil! Got some color in it, too.
Dorian, I'm with Phil on this. Don't skimp on the telescope. I struggled along for years with cheap scopes, then finally saw how things SHOULD look through a good scope. That convinced me to go buy a 6" Dobsonian. It has been well worth the money!
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