2012-01-28 A Hyper(ion) Clear Night
Dick Steinberg
Yet another clear night last night, the (count 'em) second in January. Unleashing the 12.5" Hyperion wide-field reflector, we gathered five new images at the Blue Mountain Vista Observatory.
Continuing to upgrade the Messier gallery, we obtained improved data on 4 Messier objects, as well as the galaxy NGC3718 in Ursa Major.
M36 (90 minutes RGB) and M38 (150 minutes RGB), both open clusters in Auriga, look more interesting in color than in the previous 2-minute monochrome versions (M36 and M38) from last March.
In addition, we imaged M78 (95 minutes LRGB), the less-famous "Orion nebula", a bright reflection nebula in the Orion Molecular Cloud Complex, about 1600 ly distant.
A 150-minute image shows M97, the well-known planetary nebula in Ursa Major known as the Owl nebula.
The last object, imaged in LRGB color (85 minutes total), was the highly distorted galaxy in Ursa Major NGC3718 (also see a recent DVAA talk) .
Total successful imaging time was 570 minutes (9.5 hours), with only 112 minutes lost, mostly due to passing clouds.
--
Astroimage webpage:
http://www.physics.drexel.edu/~steinberg/Astro Welcome.html
Currently 703 files, 84 folders, 2770 MiB
